One might blame Trump for provoking widespread discontent instead of cohesion after Russia’s interference. Go ahead and reread the above paragraph. It’s still stunning to recall that this was the president’s reaction. Ultimately, though, it was our choice whether to follow his lead. We decided to indulge in irrational speculation. We decided to engage in social-media warfare. We decided to alienate neighbors based on whether they agreed with Trump or not. Our response to the attack led to record levels of incivility.
The episode shows us why we need to broaden the national conversation beyond electoral politics. The 2020 election cycle is important and will no doubt weigh heavily on our future, one way or another, but if we want to remedy our political strife in the long run, it will not happen with a single Election Day. The problem is much bigger than that, and the solution is not in Washington, DC.
Donald Trump got elected on the idea that our nation’s capital was broken and needed a disruptor like him. “I will Make Our Government Honest Again—believe me. But first, I’m going to have to #DrainTheSwamp in DC,” he tweeted on October 18, 2016, the first time he deployed a phrase that became a regular mantra. From Ronald Reagan to Nancy Pelosi, politicians have promised to “drain the swamp,” a metaphor for fixing our nation’s capital and getting corruption out of politics. The phrase is doubly misleading. First, it’s a popular misconception that Washington, DC, was built on a swamp (it was not), and second, the metaphor presupposes our political problems are Washington-centric.
The complaint that Washington is “broken” is almost as old as our capital city itself. Little more than a decade after the US Constitution was ratified, the town was beset with rancorous political infighting. Observers lamented the “spectacle of a perpetual struggle” between the two parties, epitomized by the toxic election of 1800. “Neither reason nor justice can be expected from either side,” wrote one observer, noting that personal resentments were rampant in America’s political center.
Unlike our symbolic gun fights in politics today, the acrimony was so bad that it led to literal gun fights. Vice President Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel, in part due to simmering anger from the disputed election four years prior. If that wasn’t enough to increase public disgust with Washington politicians, Burr was later arrested and indicted for treason after allegedly conspiring with fellow politicians, military officers, and foreign officials to create a breakaway republic in the center of North America. It’s difficult to envision something as galling today as Mike Pence or Joe Biden devising a covert secession campaign to create their own country.
The only blip on the radar of discontent with Washington appears to be James Monroe’s presidency, 1817 to 1825. These years are known as the “era of good feelings,” in part because the two-party system was nearly abolished, and the nation’s capital was led by a single-party government, the Democratic-Republicans. Americans were happy with their elected leaders, so much so that President Monroe ran for reelection effectively unopposed, something that hasn’t happened since. But the “good feelings” were fleeting, as the issues of slavery and territorial expansion quickly polarized Washington before he left office.
Today the brokenness of the nation’s capital is broadly accepted as a fact of life. People believe that elected officials spend too much time bickering and too little time governing. They lament the nastiness of political campaigns, the constant grandstanding, the revolving door between government agencies and industry, and the fact that compromise has become a relic of the past. You have heard it a million times before and said it yourself: “They can’t get anything done.”
Public trust in our government is stuck at all-time lows. A mere 17 percent of Americans believe they can count on Washington politicians to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time,” according to one poll. A vast majority of Americans—75 percent—disapprove of the job Congress is doing. Pollsters have cleverly demonstrated that the legislative body is less popular than root canals, cockroaches, and used-car salesmen. Hence, calls to “drain the swamp” resonate widely. The only branch of government with majority approval right now is the one led by unelected officials, the US Supreme Court.
Americans do not need to grasp blindly in the dark to find the boogeyman that is haunting our civic lives. We need only to look in the mirror. Our representatives are not the source of Washington’s problems. We are the ones who pick them. If you can give the Founders credit for anything, the democratic system reflects the public mood. When we are willing to compromise, our representatives are, too. When we are angry and unyielding, partisan and greedy, they will display the same traits.
As a result, we are getting the presidency we deserve and the Congress we deserve. Is it not obvious that elected leaders are mimicking our behavior? Their snarky attacks and Twitter jabs sound a lot like the text messages we send, the comments we make below news articles, and the condescending memes we post to Facebook because it’s easier to fire rounds from behind a digital wall than hash out problems face-to-face. It’s no wonder people think Washington is broken. We are broken.
Traveling America in the 1830s, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville observed, “In America the president exerts a very great influence on affairs of state, but he does not conduct them; the preponderant power resides in the national representation as a whole. It is therefore the mass of people that must change, and not only the president, in order that the maxims of politics vary.” We can drain the swamp if we want by firing Donald Trump and electing a new Congress. I strongly believe the first action will make a difference. But lasting change will require deeper, nationwide self-reflection. It will require us to alter ourselves—to consider who we were, who we are, and who we want to be.
De Tocqueville noted during his visit to the United States that the people he encountered really knew what it meant to be citizens. Ask any American about their country, he wrote, and the person will teach you about their rights, duties, and the law. He marveled at how we derived our knowledge not from books but from firsthand experience. “It is from participating in legislation that the American learns to know the laws, from governing that he instructs himself in the form of government. The great work of society is accomplished daily before his eyes and so to speak in his hands.” An observer would be hard-pressed to say the same about us today.
The United States is an exceptional nation, but it could soon run the risk of civic-moral bankruptcy, the consequence of losing touch with history. The majority of Americans are unable to pass basic civics exams and know far too little about our past and our form of government. Many of us can’t name our congressman or state representative, let alone describe principles such as habeas corpus or popular sovereignty. We have forgotten about the world we built yesterday. Now our tomorrow is in doubt.
There are two choices. We can either bury our heads in the sand, hoping it gets better by itself. Or we can recognize the situation for what it is and, rather than allow political turmoil to hasten our demise, begin a restoration. It’s time to start searching for guideposts to rejuvenate public life. We need a “civic renaissance” for our day and age. That’s how we’ll right the ship. It requires dusting off the lessons of our forebears—updating them for the modern world—and reinvigorating active participation in our civic life. The topic itself deserves a separate book entirely.