The 250-year experiment: America’s birthday

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1:08The Economist.

1:15Hello and welcome to a special birthday episode of The Intelligence, taking a hard look at America as it turns 250.

1:36This is a big one, not just the word semi-quincentennial, which I promise only to say once. It's big because America seems, to use common economist parlance, to be at a crossroads. The founders worried that the American experiment they'd devised would soon collapse into disorder, tyranny. And here we are, a quarter millennium later, in another time of deep anxiety. Virtue is under threat. Talk of decline is in the air. Public life is scarred by division. So The Economist has gone to town on the anniversary. This week's print edition is filled with thoughtful essays and deep analysis of that experiment.

2:15And we here in the podcast department have soberly put on our birthday hats and done some reflection too. Consider when the Republic was barely 50 years old and a French aristocrat named Alexis de Tocqueville undertook what must have been one of America's first road trips. The brilliant, insightful, kind of timeless resulting book is what my colleague John Priddo relied on when he repeated the journey for our new series, Tocqueville Road Trip. Make some time to crisscross America today as seen through that lens. And John and the cast of Checks and Balance, out later today, will be looking at the separation of powers across the branches of government, another founding father preoccupation that's worth examining now.

2:59But here, today, I'm going to be joined by three colleagues to chat through three narrowly defined facets of America, then and now. The state and the resilience of its democracy, its perennial fits of policy on immigration, and its undeniable status as a mammoth exporter of culture. So in our London studio is our deputy editor, Robert Guest. Down the line in Atlanta, we have our southern correspondent, Rebecca Jackson. And in Chicago, Daniel Knowles, our Midwest correspondent. Hi, everybody.

3:29Rebecca Jackson:Hey. Hello. Hey, it's great to be here. Now, I want to start with a big question, perhaps the biggest question, and one for all of you to get started. how would you characterize the state of American democracy as it stands 250 years in? I think it's in better shape than it looks. There's obvious stuff you can see. We have the president who shows the least respect for tradition, for the law, who's enriched himself more than any other president in history and who has a very tenuous relationship with reality. But so far, the institutions are holding up reasonably well. I mean, only this week, the Supreme Court said to him, you think you can abolish birthright citizenship, but it's there in the Constitution?

4:14No, you can't. And if you're going to be pessimistic, you say they also reaffirmed his power to sack a bunch of people within the government. But you're looking at the back and forth. I think a lot of this would have been familiar to the founders. They would have said, yeah, it's a difficult project, but it's lasted 250 years. It's battle-tested. I think it'll last the next two and a half. I feel profoundly pessimistic about American democracy and the birthright citizenship ruling, unlike that being a source of optimism as it is for Robert, for me that just seems terrifying that four out of nine Supreme Court judges decided that the president can apparently just go against the plain text of the Constitution with an executive order.

4:56That seems to me a real, real threat and that's one of an awful lot of things. So I actually disagree with Robert. I am really pessimistic.

5:04Rebecca Jackson:I'd say I fall somewhere in between the two of you. I think that from my perspective, one of the things that has scared me most recently is the fight over redistricting that we're seeing playing out across America this spring. Another massive Supreme Court ruling was that the court curtailed the reach of the Voting Rights Act, which for decades had put constraints on politicians who wanted to rig the maps entirely in their favor. And basically now what we're seeing is that both Republicans and Democrats are in this, what we're calling, you know, sort of an arms race to the bottom. And one of the reasons that I'm most worried about the fate of democracy is that in the upcoming midterms, there'll be very, very few competitive congressional races.

5:45Rebecca Jackson:And that's not because there isn't disagreement on politics and policy, but it's because the districts will be drawn so carefully that candidates basically become shoe-ins. And so that means that Americans whose views are different from those around them, say a Democrat in rural Georgia or Republican in Boston, basically no longer have a voice in our democracy. So at the mention of the Constitution and a kind of erosion of what perhaps the founding fathers intended here, let's talk about the power they placed in the executive in Article No. 2 of the Constitution. The president was vested with a great deal of power, and it's been co-opted by one person by now in a way that we think we haven't seen before.

6:29Do we think that is the new norm in the way that redistricting is the new norm, or is that something you think America can walk back from? I think clearly they can walk back from it. One of the ways that the system is being tested at the moment is, and this is maybe something that the founding fathers got wrong, I don't think it really occurred to them that you would have, A, someone as personally immoral in the top job, and B, that he would have the kind of hold over his party that the current incumbent does. Now, that's quite a rare coincidence, but there are constraints there. He's term limited.

7:09He'll be gone in two and a half years. I think it's unlikely in the near term future that we would have someone else who was both as bad and at the same time, despite that, was able to maintain the cult like hold over his own party. So this is something that should spring back quite sharply after the next presidential election.

7:28Rebecca Jackson:Robert, I agree with that. I mean, I think if you look at J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio, the two people most talked about as the frontrunners in the Republican Party for 2028, clearly neither of them command that kind of cult-like following that Trump does. I think, on the other hand, you can't talk about Article 2 this week without looking to Monday's Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which basically gave the president in the short term authority to fire the FTC chair, but more broadly gave him control over roughly two dozen government agencies that were, I guess, once considered to be independent.

8:00Rebecca Jackson:even if culturally and politically we'll be able to roll back some of the president's power. I think the more it becomes enshrined in the legal precedent, the harder that will be. America's been in much worse places before. They had a whacking great civil war in the 19th century and that was much harder to recover from, although eventually they did. The Great Depression was probably worse. The period of trying to deal with segregation and get rid of that was worse. and all these things have led to renewal. And I think looking at Trump today, an awful lot of this is bound up in the unusual personality of one man and that man is extremely unpopular.

8:41It is abundantly clear that his party is going to lose the House in the midterms this year, which will put a constraint on him, quite possibly loses the Senate as well, although that's much more touch and go. And I do think that if things carry on the way they are at the moment, when you come to the next presidential election, whether it's Vance, whether it's Rubio, the country will want to change. And the system allows the voters to demand that and get it. I think all of what Robert just said is true. And yet a number of precedents have been set here that any president will want to use and perhaps sometimes should use.

9:15But I just don't think the toothpaste goes back in the chew when it comes to presidential power. But when it comes to power being handed over to an eventual democratic administration, eventually. The issue, it seems to me, has a lot to do with the sort of zero-sum nature of American politics now, not working on the American project together, but only working against the other guy. Rebecca, you've been doing some reporting on the state of division in the nation. What's your take on that?

9:43Rebecca Jackson:Yeah, I mean, Robert, you mentioned the Civil War and fights over segregation, and that's particularly vivid in my mind this week because I was just down in Montgomery, Alabama. And I'm writing a piece for the paper this week for our July 4th edition that looks at the contrast between what they're doing there and what's happening in Washington. And I think one of the starkest things that I'm seeing just in the rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration is this attempt to erase history, filter out the bad. Last year, Trump issued an executive order that was titled, I think, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History and called on basically all these federally funded institutions to wipe out, to censor any kind of information that cast a negative light on America's history.

10:25Rebecca Jackson:And interestingly, in Montgomery, Alabama, which was the cradle of the Confederacy, a place where there used to be more slave trading depots than churches, and also the place where really the civil rights movement came out of, the city is dealing with things extremely differently. And it's sort of a rebuke to Washington right now. I was there last week and Bryan Stevenson, who's the head of the Equal Justice Initiative, has basically transformed the entire downtown of the city into a museum or monument to slavery and racial terror. And that, interestingly, has transformed the city economically.

10:57Rebecca Jackson:It's making tourism boom and is allowing them to revive themselves in a kind of astonishing way. What we're coming to is this clash. How does America see itself? In recent polling that we reported on this week, Democrats and Republicans, there's a huge gulf in how patriotic they feel. And I think part of that is coming from a sense that we just see this country, its past and its future really differently. I completely agree with Rebecca that the attempts by the Trump administration to whitewash history are reprehensible, but they're also risible. They're not going to work. The federal government doesn't control the schools.

11:34There's also the entire cultural industry, Hollywood, academia. When Trump does something like this, it almost enhances people's desire to argue about this and to highlight both the bad things and the good things of history. His lasting legacy on our understanding of history is going to be about as long lasting as the little bits of guilt that he superglues to the marble in the Oval Office.

11:57Rebecca Jackson:Robert, I think there's certainly some truth to that, but I think it also discounts the fact that MAGA has become a grassroots movement across the country, right? And school boards are in some ways sort of ground zero for that. We've seen groups like Moms for Liberty put tons of resources and effort into electing people who do want to whitewash this kind of history to the school boards, to the county commissions. And so I think you do see a lot of changes happening from the ground up. And I think that is quite scary. Is it different, though, from what you see in other countries? You go to somewhere like Russia and there's lots of people who actually remember Stalin fondly.

12:31You go to China, Mao is still a national hero. You go to Britain, there's lots of people who can't remember who Churchill was.

12:37Rebecca Jackson:But Robert, isn't that quite scary to compare America to Russia and China? I mentioned Britain as well. and I used to live in Japan and you know the sort of understanding of what actually happened during World War II there is pretty skimpy I think you have unrealistic expectations if you think people are going to have a historian's level of understanding of history but I think basic things slavery existed it was terrible segregation existed it was terrible I think it would be extremely hard to stamp out some degree of knowledge of that along the way there Rebecca mentioned this question of how does America see itself?

13:13I'm sort of wondering how the world sees America in this moment when all of this dysfunction is on display. I've been thinking about this a lot actually. Last year I went to visit some friends in Canada and turned up and all these Canadians were asking me, why would you go back to America? Why haven't you left? Place seems a disaster. That when you come back across the border and you talk to people, certainly in the Midwest, There's barely an awareness of how angry people outside are. I travel around the world all the time and say I'm under no illusions as to how upset people are about the current administration.

13:53But if you step back for a moment, America is going to remain the preeminent technological power, the preeminent power producing innovation, one of the preeminent cultural powers and the preeminent military power in the world for some time to come. And so people will continue to pay attention to it. And people's moods do change depending on what they're seeing in the news. I'm old enough to remember the transition from George Bush to Barack Obama happened, and you saw views of America flip dramatically in a positive direction. And even according to some polls, people didn't just have a more favorable view of American democracy and American culture under Obama than they did under Bush.

14:37They actually had a more favorable view of the American landscape, which obviously had not changed. So I think if you're looking at the underlying thing about America is it's the power that you cannot ignore that produces lots of good things and lots of bad things and that it will continue to evolve and people will continue to engage with it, which is just not something that you can say about most other countries.

15:03Investing with Schwab is like spending a Saturday at a great farmer's market. You can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything. Maybe you go for some free-range, self-directed investing. Or perhaps you pick up a few farm-fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor. That's full-service wealth management. Mix, match, and change your mind whenever you want. Because at Schwab, you can invest your way. No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more. You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank?

15:39Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining al fresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to 70 % off during Wayfair's 4th of July clearance. Score huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs, and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus, surprise flash deals July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

16:09Now, one way in which America continues to evolve is in its attitudes towards migration. Before we go on, I'd like to play you a little dispatch from Aaron Braun, our West Coast correspondent.

16:23Americans have been arguing about immigration since the country's founding. In his first message to Congress as president in 1801, Thomas Jefferson insisted it was too difficult for newcomers to become citizens. Shall we refuse the unhappy fugitives from distress, that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land? Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe? Alexander Hamilton, his rival and an immigrant himself, actually favored restrictions. The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment, on a uniformity of principles and habits, on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice.

17:16This debate over how welcoming America should be is woven into the very fabric of the country. We have seen it resurface again and again as new waves of immigrants have arrived on America's shores. The first big influx of immigrants came to America between 1820 and 1880. Most were from Northern and Western Europe. Nearly 2 million Irish people arrived during this time, driven from their homes by famine.

17:55By summer of 1848, East Coast newspapers first published accounts of gold in California.

18:06Around the same time, California's gold rush lured Chinese migrants to the West Coast. Animosity towards Chinese laborers grew. And in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law to restrict immigration to America based on race or nationality. A second wave came between 1890 and 1919, when more than 18 million people arrived, mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe. Many of these new Americans came through Ellis Island, and they settled mainly in industrial cities. By 1920, close to 15 million of them had crossed the Atlantic. They often found themselves living in desperate conditions, with housing in the cities becoming more and more crowded.

19:02Then, more backlash, more suspicion. New legislation closed the door to would-be Americans. In 1924, Congress enacted a strict quota system that would limit immigration for the next four decades. It is a proud privilege to be a citizen of the Great Republic, to hear its song sung, to realize that we are the descendants of 40 million people who left other countries... Americans like to describe their country as a nation of immigrants. That phrase was popularized in the 1950s by then-Senator John F. Kennedy. I think it is not a burden, but a privilege.

19:51His successor in the Oval Office, Lyndon Johnson, would sign the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965. That law ended the quota system and established America's modern immigration regime. Over the next century, the share of immigrants from Latin America began to grow. The introduction of refugee protections in the 1980s meant asylum seekers fleeing violence in Central America started arriving at the southern border, but many were turned away. And so church leaders in Arizona and California took inspiration from the activities of the Underground Railroad. And so we began to smuggle folks across what we thought was very secretively.

20:40And that gave birth to the sanctuary movement. These churches and the borderlands inspired cities and states to enact sanctuary policies of their own. Policies that have recently put them at odds with the federal government. The Justice Department is now suing New York City over its sanctuary laws. Trump administration is suing Los Angeles, accusing city leaders of blocking federal immigration enforcement.

21:09Over the last 250 years, American attitudes towards immigration have shifted from openness to exclusion and back again. Right now, America is in the midst of yet another backlash.

21:26The border is closed. The wall is being built. Detention centers are full. And visas are hard to come by. But an optimistic reading of American history suggests that immigration restrictionism is only temporary. And that the country's Hamiltonian impulses will again give way to its Jeffersonian ones.