Why democracy requires renewal | Michael Dimock

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Today is July 4th, Independence Day in the U.S., and this year marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the country's Declaration of Independence. And yet 59 percent of Americans say its country's best days are behind it. Michael Dimmick, the president of the Pew Research Center, has spent years analyzing why. And hidden within people's answers is something surprising. What we're hearing from Americans recently is pretty dark. It's a public that feels scared and stuck and divided.

0:46But when we listen even more closely, we hear a determination and a readiness for innovation in the voice of Americans. that echoes that spirit of the founders and I think offers a path forward. Michael's job is to listen carefully, rigorously, and at scale to what Americans are actually thinking and feeling. In this talk, he shares what that listening has taught him and why he believes the path forward might be hiding in plain sight. We have to remember that our democracy is meant to be dynamic and through our action. The founders didn't hand us a finished product. They handed us an ongoing project that requires engagement and creativity from one generation to the next.

1:32The answer might not be a policy fix or a political party, but rather us. The question is, are we willing to do the work? That's coming up right after a short break.

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4:12And now, our TED Talk of the day. What happened 250 years ago was a spark that ignited the world. When the founders articulated the principles of democracy and proceeded to fight for and win them, it inspired democratic conversations around the globe. Now, almost all of us can remember those inalienable rights identified at the start of that Declaration of Independence, right? Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. If you remember your civics class, that next sentence was arguably the more important one, because that's when they go on to say that governments exist to secure those rights and that governments derive their power from the consent of the governed.

5:02Right? In 1776, that was the proverbial shot heard around the world. And their audacious act of democratic imagination also inspired a particular form of civic pride and identity in this country. This is a country united around common principles, not a common ruler, a common history, a common faith, a common creed. In a way, what binds us is this very idea that this nation can be, hopes to be, an inspiration to future generations and a beacon to the world. What we sometimes forget, though, is that this system was never meant to be static. The founders didn't hand us a finished product. They handed us an ongoing project that requires engagement and creativity from one generation to the next.

5:57So our responsibility is to carry that democratic imagination forward to make sure that this democratic republic doesn't become static, right? Or stuck, or rigid, or even cynical. So why am I standing here today? I'm at the Pew Research Center, and we care deeply about understanding where Americans are and how they're thinking. And to do that, we ask people a lot of questions. And we don't take that process lightly. We believe that when we ask people to offer us their views and values and opinions and concerns, we're asking you to give us something precious, something private, right? And so our obligation is to listen with respect and to report out on what we hear with care and with clarity.

6:53And so what brings me here to share is that what we're hearing from Americans recently is pretty dark. It's a public that feels scared and stuck and divided. But when we listen even more closely, we hear a determination and a readiness for innovation in the voice of Americans that echoes that spirit of the founders. And I think offers a path forward. So let me start with the dark part, right? Where are we today? What is this public mood? And bring a little bit of data behind it. Americans are feeling sort of stuck in a doom loop of sorts, and it's made up of three key components, three trends.

7:38And the first, I almost don't need to say out loud, is partisan polarization, right? We no longer just disagree over issues and which candidates can best lean us forward. We've grown to, at a civic level, mistrust, and even use dehumanizing language about each other. And America really stands apart globally for this level of polarization. We surveyed around the world during and after the pandemic, just to use one recent example we remember. And throughout, the American public was the most or among the most divided, whether it was the outbreak, vaccination, government responses, civil society. And after the worst of the pandemic was over, 81 percent of Americans said that that collective experience just drove us further apart.

8:29That's more than in any other country that we surveyed. The second trend in this is we become more disconnected from each other. Basic trust in our neighbors has fallen over 40 years. And Americans have come to doubt the very wisdom of the crowds, right? the collective wisdom that really is the foundation of democracy. And again, America stands apart from other countries in this sense of disconnection. Last year, we surveyed people in 24 countries around the world, and American public was the least likely to say they feel connected to their fellow citizens in their country, and among the least likely to say even that they feel connected to people in their local communities.

9:15And the third factor in this is that many Americans have come to believe that our political system is just fundamentally flawed. Basic trust in the government to do what's right, it's vacillated, but it's just fallen and flatlined for over 20 years. And Americans today are more likely to believe their elected officials care more about winning those partisan skirmishes and even enriching themselves, then they care about the act of listening and representing their constituents. And these three factors, partisan polarization and civic disconnection and cynicism about the political system, they all sort of feed off of each other.

9:57They each reinforce the other, and they're accelerated by a fragmented media ecosystem, by an algorithmically driven digital ecosystem, to the point where what Americans are telling us, they just feel the country's, the centrifugal forces, right? that we're just getting pulled farther and farther apart, that the common bonds feel strained. As we came into this semi-quincentennial year, 59 percent of Americans versus 40 percent told us that this country's best days are behind us, not in front of us, 59 to 40. I don't know. How would you answer that question? And if your thinking is maybe behind us, what does it take to turn that lens?

10:43I mean, it's easy to get discouraged and depressed even. The question is, what do we do about it? And in my experience, that question almost always starts with each of us. So let me offer three quick things. The first, we probably should put the phones down, right? They're not helping. And maybe the way to think about it is that our addiction to, or commitment to, you know, whatever language works for you, those devices is really taking away our most valuable asset in our communities. It's our attention, our ability to connect at a human level. And that gets me to my second point, is we do need to be talking to each other more.

11:34And in a way, the American public today has become afraid to have conversations about their democracy because we've allowed the frame to be set around our grievances and our fears and our differences. But there's a different kind of conversation we can be having. It's what we're here for today. It's about our hopes for this country and what we can be doing together. Now, I grant you that's still a hard conversation to start, especially with someone you don't know. But nobody can take that small step but each of us, and that's what becomes cumulative. And then third, we have to remember that solutions are possible.

12:15That the Constitution of this nation, signed just a mile from here in 1787, gives us the right, it actually gives us the obligation to take things into our own hands. Because the founders, in all their wisdom and all their flaws, understood that when any system of government becomes static, it becomes stuck. So we have to remember that our democracy is dynamic. And what I mean by that is not just that our democracy has to figure out how to address emerging issues and technologies. To be sure, the founders, I'm pretty convinced, couldn't imagine this thing we're calling artificial intelligence and offer us advice about how we should think about what it means for our society, for our politics, for our economy.

13:05We're going to have to figure that one out. I'm actually talking about something more fundamental, which is that the founders understood that any system of government that's carefully balancing our liberties and governance, if left still for too long, sort of becomes trapped. So take partisanship. The founders couldn't have imagined the Republican and Democratic parties of 2026, but they absolutely understood that political polarization was fundamental. It was going to happen in any democratic system, and needed to be attended to, or it would become dangerous. They couldn't have fully understood how large the population of this country would grow, and its distribution, and its diversity.

13:50But they absolutely understood that how we take the voice of that public and convert it into effective representation through elections was going to require constant attention and adaptation. Or it would get trapped or even hijacked. I mean, look at what we're doing with redistricting today, right? They couldn't have fully understood how huge this country's economy would be and the amount of money in our system and how that would influence politics, but they did understand, and you can see it in their writing, that money was a fundamental challenge that every democracy was going to have to balance if it cared about representation.

14:33And in all of these spaces, they never thought that there could be one solution. Because every time you fix a problem, another problem arises. That's not a flaw. That's the nature of a democratic republic. That's what we signed on for. So we can all think about our biggest problems with government today, but I'm here to also say that we can think of solutions. Last year, we interviewed Americans across the country and asked them, what would you do to fix our political system? Boy, did they have a lot to say, right? At the biggest level, a vast majority of Americans are willing to engage with major reform to our political system, out of scale, actually, with other countries of our means.

15:19Their priorities would be improving the quality of representation, reducing the influence of money in our political system, defusing that negative partisan tone that our dialogue just gravitates towards. And they're willing to engage with conversations about a whole host of reforms, from longstanding ideas like term limits for members of Congress to newer ideas like age limits for elected officials or judges or getting rid of the Electoral College or their electoral reforms. There are so many ideas out there that a majority of Americans are ready to think about. Now, I'm not here to advocate for any of those particular reforms.

15:59Each of them can be debated for their pros and their cons. What I'm here to say is we really need to be having those debates, and we need to take them seriously, and we need to have the courage to be willing to change a political system that a majority of Americans feel is obviously broken. We sit here in 2026, and our society, our public, hasn't engaged in a conversation about constitutional amendment in 55 years since we lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. How many people here remember that conversation? It was a while ago. The previous time our Constitution went unamended for a stretch that long was in the lead-up to the Civil War.

16:44We have to remember that our democracy is meant to be dynamic and through our action. But we've sort of become so afraid of what could be worse, particularly could it benefit the other side, that we've stopped really imagining how we can make it better. So, I want to go back to the Declaration of Independence, because after enumerating those inalienable rights and after asserting that authority comes from the governed, they go on to say that whenever any system of government becomes destructive to those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish that government. Now, in the context of 1776, there's no doubt that they were saying they had no choice but to abolish the system they were living under and start from scratch.

17:37But it was their hope that future generations could alter and iterate on the framework they built. Those solutions are not just going to drop down magically on us. It's going to take hard work. But if this country is going to stay whole, is going to thrive, is going to be an inspiration for future generations, we have to be willing to commit to make those same brave leaps of democratic imagination. Thank you.

18:18That was Michael Dimmick at TED Democracy Philadelphia in 2026. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

18:59Thanks for listening.

19:10Hey, it's Paige from Giggly Squad, and I want to let you know that if you want the newest and hottest beauty products, you have to go to Sephora. I'm obsessed with the One Size Liquid Blotting Paper Spray. It's the first of its kind blotting spray that mattifies for up to eight hours. It's unreal. There's also the Summer Friday Shade Drops SPF 50, which basically lives in my bag at this point. Oh, and the Kayali Eden Plush Pear smells so good. It's sweet, warm, and addictive. Like, people literally stop me and ask what perfume I'm wearing, which you know I love. So if you want the makeup, skincare, hair, and fragrance products everyone's about to be obsessed with, shop only at Sephora.

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