Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio

news.

We are a very complicated country with a

very complicated relationship to family

community. I think all Americans kind of

wrestle with that, celebrate that,

wrestle with it, wonder whether we have

lived up to the nation's ideals. These

are questions maybe more at this moment

than in any other as we're on the eve of

the nation's 250th anniversary.

>> Jill Leapore, Pulit surprisewinning

historian of the United States. I think

from your voice, I feel that this this

weighs very heavily on you this moment

in time.

>> I think it weighs heavily on everyone

whether it's their job to think about it

all day or not. We are in freef fall off

a cliff here. I don't know when we land.

from Bloomberg Weekend. This is the

Michelle Hussein show. I'm Michelle

Hussein.

America's big birthday is upon us. It

was on the 4th of July 1776

that a relatively short text, the

Declaration of Independence, was

formally adopted in Philadelphia.

A final departure of British troops from

the United States was still some years

away and so was the other key

foundational document of the country,

the Constitution, which wasn't even

drafted until 1787.

And that's the text that's our root into

America's story this July 4th. The

Harvard historian Jill Leapor joins me

to take us through her monumental work,

We the People. It's a book on how the

Constitution came about and crucially

how there was an expectation that it

would likely change over time. This is

not however an episode entirely set in

the past because Jill Leapore is acutely

alive to the pressures of our time to a

contested sense of what America is or

what it should be. She's also unusual in

her background and we'll talk about this

early on. She's very far from an ivory

tower type historian. She's served in

the US military and her route into

teaching history at Harvard is a

sideways one. Plus, she's prolific

articles, a podcast series on Elon Musk,

and many books. We the people has just

won her a Pulit surprise, and her next

book, The Rise and Fall of the

Artificial State, which is about

technology and democracy, is out next

month.

So here is Jill Leapor on America past

and present.

Oh hello. Thanks so much for having me.

>> Anything in particular on your mind

today that you're particularly thinking

about or state of the world?

>> Yeah, you try to think about lunch just

to get through the day. Really?

>> I mean

>> that's my plan. I'd love to begin with a

sense of you before we move on to your

work, particularly because I was struck

by the fact that you are one of the

foremost scholars and writers on

American history and yet you have an

unusual background as a professor of

history because neither of your first

two degrees are in history.

>> None of my degrees are in history. Uh

yeah, I always wanted to just be a

writer and um graduated early with a

degree in English as I couldn't afford

to stay in college. I worked as a

secretary actually here at Harvard for a

while and wrote novels during the

workday and sat in on classes. I was a

high school athlete, you know, Girl

Scout person with a great sense of civic

duty. Had no money for college and I got

an ROC scholarship to go to college. So,

>> which is the system by which your

tuition fees and other expenses are paid

for in exchange for agreeing to serve in

the military afterwards

>> and agreeing agreeing to serve. Yeah.

Yeah.

>> So, then what happened? What changed?

You're talking to us now about your

books on constitutional and and other

history, but you could have been sitting

in the Pentagon listening to Pete Hexert

speak. I do sometimes think about that.

Yeah. And all my friends in college were

ROC kids. You know, you incur a service

obligation when you went to your

sophomore year. Um, and I actually loved

ROC, but at the time Reagan's foreign

policy was really interventionist, for

instance, in Haiti. And in particular,

Reagan was exploring what was

colloquially known as the Star Wars

program, the strategic defense

initiative. He was going to build a

missile shield, something like the

Israeli Iron Dome right around the

planet to end the Cold War. And so all

the students were engineers, and

everyone thought the Star Wars plan was

completely nonsensical as an engineering

design. And I thought politically it was

also nonsensical. And I went and had a

meeting with my commanding officer and I

said, I don't think I could work on

that.

>> And he said, you know, cadet and you

can't be in the military. You don't get

to choose. This is not going to be for

you if you're going to be evaluating the

projects that are coming out of the

Pentagon

>> as to whether or not you're ethically

willing to comply with them. He was a

lovely person and he was a very wise

man.

>> So it was a fork in the road moment. So

how did history come into it then? Did

it happen while you were working at

Harvard as a secretary?

>> Uh, I don't think that my interest in

history is necessarily the same as that

of many of my wonderful and

distinguished colleagues who I think are

often are interested in the debates

among historians about how to interpret

moments uh or forces of change. I am

interested in the relationship between

the past and the present in a very

vernacular way, right? in the sense of I

think we all walk through our lives

wondering how we got to where we are,

how the institutions we work for or the

companies we work for or the farms on

which we work got to be where they are.

Um, I'm just really interested in

inquiring into the relationship between

the past and the present and finding

explanations that in my mind often offer

a way for me to think about how to

escape sometimes what feels like

difficult present present moments. I'm

also wondering to what extent the past

and your relation with America's past

was there in your family life because

your the grandchild of immigrants,

aren't you? Italian immigrants. Is it

true that your grandmother never spoke

any English? You could never actually

communicate with her.

>> Yeah. No, she she didn't. And as far as

her Italian, we were always told mainly

she was swearing. She was a hilarious,

very earthy woman. But do you remember

thinking about America's past in this in

this very real way? It was a country

that your grandparents chose.

>> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my father was

born here in 1924 and was given the

middle name America after Vaspuchcci,

but because he was born in the United

States and 1924 is also the year that

Congress passed the immigration act that

essentially closed the doors of the

United States to immigrants certainly

from Eastern Europe and to a significant

degree from Western Europe as well. I

don't know. I remember my dad telling me

about that. He when he was confirmed, he

changed his middle name to Edward. That

was his confirmation name. And there was

a a real kind of eraser. He was one of

those second generation immigrants who

he was completely fluent in Italian but

never spoke it with us. He didn't want

us to learn to speak Italian. You mean

because he was embarrassed?

>> I don't know. I think most I think most

Americans grow up with some version of,

you know, their account of the nation's

history as a version of their family

story. Whether you yourself are an

immigrant or you know your family has

been in this country for generations

upon generations.

>> Do you think your father changing his

middle name was a deliberate act of

integration

>> to try and be like everyone else? Maybe

I think he was maybe a little bit

embarrassed by it. But I once wrote an

article called the Everyman Library

about my father's books because when he

died I inherited the these books that he

had which are basically his college

textbooks and he had a copy of the Aniid

that he had really marked up you know

which is a journey about trying to get

home much like the Odyssey and I think

my father had a very complicated

relationship with the idea that he had

come from someplace else. was so rooted

in the United States. I think for anyone

also an Italian-American fighting in the

Second World War, fighting, you know,

against the Axis powers that included

Italy was really complicated. My mother

was descended from Germans and her

father had worked for the Navy during

the first world war, but was a German

American who was essentially pushed out

of that kind of work. He had been at MIT

and German Americans were considered a

security risk during the the First World

War. So, I don't think there's anything

unusual in my story. I I you know I I

really I do think we are a very

complicated country with a very

complicated relationship to family

community. The idea of the nation state

the tension between the universal and

the particular what makes America both

distinctive and the fountain head of

universal ideas or ideas that have been

embra embraced around the world. Yeah,

>> I think all Americans kind of wrestle

with that, celebrate that, wrestle with

it, wonder whether we have lived up to

the nation's ideals. I think these are

questions maybe more at this moment than

in any other as we're on the eve of the

nation's 250th anniversary. We're

swimming in in our history right now.

The question is really whether we're

drowning in it.

>> Yes. So let's come right up to the

present day then and your book which is

heavy in its subject matter and

physically heavy as well because it's a

it's a big work and it's about the US

constitution we the people tell us about

it particularly the fact that you

focused on how it was intended to be a a

living document not a tablet of stone

>> yeah I think we have to the degree that

Americans kind of carry around with them

any sense of the constitution as having

a history as opposed to just being you

know a piece of parchment that you could

go see at the National Shrine and the

National Archives um or something that

members of Congress will wave these kind

of pocket editions at one another. To

the extent that we have idea that has a

history that it we could trace it over

time, that ideas really relies on the

Supreme Court. So like in in law

schools, I'm speaking now from the

Harvard Law School. Law students are

really taught to learn a series of

Supreme Court decisions and that's how

lawyers and judges are going to argue

about the meaning of the Constitution.

This is in reference to earlier

decisions of the Supreme Court. And as

an American historian interested in the

story of the people as a whole, that

always seemed to me something of a

problem because it it presumes that the

court itself has created a fiction about

which is that the the Supreme Court is

the only authority on the Constitution

and the only mode of constitutional

change that is possible is seeking

change by way of the Supreme Court. when

in fact that is absolutely a a crucial

way that the that the constitution

changes and the Supreme Court has an

unparalleled role in changing the

constitution. But if we think about the

history of the constitution only that

way, we miss that the constitution was

written in an age that celebrated what I

call the philosophy of amendment. The

idea very enlightenment idea kind of

almost panglossian like the world is

getting better every day in every way.

The idea that if you're going to write

down a constitution, which was new,

which was a new idea in the 18th

century, if you're going to write down a

constitution, and is an ingenious thing

because then it's going to be

transparent. The powers that government

has, the limits to the powers of

government, the rights of the people,

all those things are going to be written

down. We can inspect them. We can hold

the government accountable to those

things. We can insist on those limits.

We can insist on those rights. This is a

genius idea, but that if you're going to

write something down, there has to be a

way for it to change over time. And it

can't be changed by the forces of

tyranny, which will be the inevitable

mode of change that all of human history

explained to the framers of the US

Constitution that humans for almost the

entirety of human history have been

ruled by tyrants, been ruled by force

and violence. So, you have to have a

mechanism for change and that mechanism

is amendment. And it's within the

document because I'm holding one of

those pocket versions and it's there

article five setting out the way that

the constitution can be amended which

was essentially a key part of how it

ended up getting passed in that agreed

to in the summer of 1787 because

without it it it was the way to bridge

the disagreements to say this is what

we're going to this is the document

we're agreeing to right now.

>> Yeah. I mean it was necessary at the

convention in in the summer of 1787

where there was a tremendous

disagreement and the entire constitution

is the subject of very strenuously

fought compromise but everyone

understood there was going to be an

amendment provision because that's why

they were there in the first place

because the previous frame of government

was essentially un amendable required

unanimity to amend what was essentially

the treaty that united the 13 states the

articles of confederation. So they were

there to come up with a new constitution

because the other version couldn't be

amended. So they knew they're going to

have to a make it amendable and they did

but it would not have been ratified. So

in September of 1787 the constitution is

sent to the 13 states at least nine of

which have to approve it in order for it

to become law. But in practical terms

all 13 states have to approve it because

what's going to happen to the other

four? They're just going to walk away.

So there's a it's a very close call.

People have a lot of problems with the

constitution. They have a lot the states

propose some 200 amendments to it even

before it's they're willing to ratify

it. And so the federalists who are the

proponents of the constitution say look

it's okay. We know it's not perfect. We

did our best. None of us are really

entirely happy with it either. Everyone

had a problem with something in the

constitution or something that wasn't in

the constitution. And so their whole

kind of slogan was if it was a bumper

sticker it's ratify now amend later. You

know just let's ratify it. Like we're in

chaos here as a country. we have to have

a constitution. Please just ratify that.

We promise the first thing we'll do when

Congress sits uh for the inaugural

Congress is we will send amendments to

the states. And in fact, they did.

That's what the Bill of Rights is.

>> But over time, over the sweep of these

250 years, since um since independence,

not since the Constitution, it has been

amended very little. Why is that the

case? Yeah, there's a whole field of

political science that studies

amendments, amendability, amendment

rates, amendment difficulty. The US

Constitution, while undoubtedly the most

influential constitution in the world,

is one of the least amended and one of

the most difficult to amend. It's it's

not at the top of that list, but it's

very very high up in both of those

counts. It has been amended really only

17 times. It has proven to be the case

that for most of American history, it's

very difficult, if not impossible, to

amend the Constitution and then

something pushes that door open and then

a flood of amendments come in. Then the

door slams shut again and then for

decades and decades and decades, it's

impossible to amend the Constitution. We

are in a period now where it's

effectively impossible to amend the

Constitution. It requires a two-third

supermajority in both houses of Congress

and then a three4s ratification

ratification of three-4s of the states

and the degree of polarization in the

country today just effectively makes

that impossible. I mean think about

twothirds is also the necessary bar in

the Senate for impeaching a president.

>> Yeah. So in your view is that a good or

a bad thing? Do you dislike the idea of

it being amended or do you think it's an

important and necessary function of

democracy and we should be able to get

there?

>> I don't honestly have a prescription. I

do think it's important to recognize

that the Constitution hasn't been

meaningfully amended since 1971.

That means that because change is going

to happen. You know, like a river is

going to find you can put a dam in, but

the water's going to go somewhere. the

water runs to the Supreme Court and then

the Supreme Court has far more power

than it was intended to have which is a

deformity of our politics. Then Supreme

Court nominations become hugely

controversial. The public is really

engaged in them. The Supreme Court

justices have become really celebrities,

personalities, characters. People know

about them, their lives. They write

memoirs. They go on book tours. That's

not how the Supreme Court was meant to

function. And I think it has contributed

to

presidentialism. That is to say the the

celebrityification and magnification

exaggeration amplification of the role

of the executive who in this instance in

this iteration of effectively an

amendment drought. This president's view

is that whatever he says is in the

constitution is in it and what he says

is not in it is not. I think that's

actually essentially a continuation of

the kind of deformity of the separation

of powers that has been out of whack

since the constitution became un

amendable. So I there's another argument

why it would be good to amend the

constitution more often and that is that

I would suspect most Americans don't

know the US constitution is amendable

for one thing and we don't feel

ourselves to be the authors of our own

constitution and that is the principle

on which the nation was founded and

arguably is crucial to the legitimacy of

the constitution. So a lot of the

political instability, constitutional

instability we see now, I think we would

describe as insurrectionary and

amendment was the mechanism that was

meant to prevent insurrection. If you as

a people wanted to fundamentally change

the government, adjust something

significantly like impose term limits on

Congress for instance, you ought to be

able to do it peacefully. You ought not

to need to use political violence to

secure that result. That was the genius

of the amendment provision in the first

place.

>> I suspect that we're going to go back

and forth in time. founding fathers

present day quite a lot in this

conversation because those are the

threads you're already touching on. But

let's hear then from President Trump. I'

I'd like to play you these words from

him when he was being questioned by NBC

News about the deportation of Kilmargo

Garcia wrongly as US government

officials acknowledged to El Salvador.

Your secretary of state says everyone

who's here, citizens and non-citizens,

deserve due process. Do you agree, Mr.

President?

>> I don't know. I'm not I'm not a lawyer.

I don't know.

>> Well, the fifth amendment says

>> I don't know. It seems It seems It might

say that, but if you're talking about

that, then we'd have to have a million

or two million or three million trials.

>> Don't you need to uphold the

Constitution of the United States as

president?

>> I don't know. Uh, I have to respond by

saying again, I have brilliant lawyers

that work for me and they are going to

obviously follow what the Supreme Court

said. What you said is not what I heard.

The Supreme Court said they have a

different interpretation.

>> So when you heard those words, as I'm

sure you did at the time, what did you

think?

>> He can't not know that it is his duty to

uphold the Constitution. That is the

oath that he swore when taking office. I

think the overwhelming majority of of

the legal scholars consulted across the

political spectrum are now convinced

that we are in a in a considerable

crisis regarding the rule of law in this

country. Um because Trump's behavior has

been entirely different in this

administration in this second term which

is to do whatever he wishes to do and

hope that the court blinks without

regard to its constitutionality or its

legality to just proceed and do it and

see what happens. I think from your

voice I feel that this this weighs very

heavily on you this moment in time.

>> I think it weighs heavily on everyone

whether it's their job to think about it

all day or not. We are in freef fall off

a cliff here. I don't know when we land.

Can you explain though what you mean by

freef fall and what it is that you see

that that leads you to believe that it

is so serious and and indeed

unconstitutional. Is that is that what

you're saying that the president is

acting unconstitutionally?

>> I think that much that many of this

administration's actions that many

federal courts have declared to be

unconstitutional. It's not my personal

view as a citizen. and I may have my own

evaluations of it, but the courts have

have declared much of it to be so.

>> Is the central position in all of that

the use of the executive order or the

use of emergency powers? I think that

has been an engine for Trump

characterized by an extraordinary number

not only of executive orders, a

record-breaking number, but a

record-breaking number of of

declarations of emergencies, an

immigration emergency and energy

emergency, which gave the executive new

powers to to take action. And he was not

the first to do that. In fact, the

Democrats were the first to really use

uh declarations of emergency for these

purposes.

>> Which Democrat would that have been? You

see a lot of the use of the emergency

powers by Bill Clinton for instance and

there's that, you know, there are a lot

of declarations of emergency during what

George W. Bush called the global war on

terror. There are circumstances that to

some degree or others would seem to

necessitate declarations of emergency.

Those that Trump offered up seemed, I

think, to most observers far more

opportunistic.

But you know there's a larger story

about the impotence of Congress, the

relinquishment on the part of Congress

of its powers to the presidency that has

been happening for decades. The press's

fascination with the office of the

presidency has been a real contribution

to its exaggerated powers. I think

Americans believe the president is far

more powerful than the president is

constitutionally meant to be because the

press has become fascinated with the

presidency. that really started in the

1990s at a time when Trump himself was

becoming a celebrity, right? The sort of

lifestyles of the rich and famous was

something that Bill Clinton really

participated in, Obama really

participated in. There are larger

historical forces at play here that make

Trump's presidency possible that have to

do with distortions of the separation of

powers and have to do with the cult of

presidentialism. So, I guess what I mean

about falling off a cliff to get back to

this isn't I feel like I' I've veered

too far away from your question as if

I'm in a presidential debate and I have

actually completely failed to answer

your question, but it's an important

question. So, I will go back to it and

dutifully attempt to answer it. I one of

the things that I will confess

annoying as an American political

historian is being asked all the time,

is this unprecedented? Really every

query I have gotten from every

journalist has been is this

unprecedented? Is this is there a

precedent for this? And I have recently

decided I simply refuse to engage in

that conversation. This is entirely

without precedent. the kind of authority

that this administration has claimed for

itself and exercised over Congress, the

Supreme Court, the states, the American

people, citizens, immigrants, aliens

alike, is without precedent in American

history. The end is with precedent in

the histories of other nations. There is

no precedent for this presidency, in the

history of the United States.

American history is not a map that you

can go to to see what's going to happen

next. It's just not. We are off that

map.

>> I'm really interested in what you said

about the cult of the presidency and how

recent it is. So I mean obviously the

office of the presidency is in the

constitution as is as is the Supreme

Court as is Congress crucially right at

the beginning. What happened in the in

the 1990s? What what do you ascribe this

to this where the office of the

presidency becomes bigger than you think

it should be? Well, presidential power

really begins to increase with FDR in in

the 1930s significantly, but by no means

continuously. And one of the things that

amplifies presidential power are new

technologies of communication. So, of

course, FDR is the radio president.

Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s becomes

known as the television president. John

F. Kennedy commisss for the first time

Air Force One and is able to travel in a

new way and with greater frequency and

be more visible. But it's by the 1980s,

it turns out that Americans are just not

that fascinated by the presidency. And

the president does have quite limited

powers in the United States. The framers

were extremely ambivalent about even

having a president. And Reagan, who was

often called the six o'clock president

or the prime time president because he

gave these speeches on prime time news

was really the last American president

to speak to a national audience

routinely. Broadcast news began its

decline, was replaced by cable news,

then by the internet and social media

and the the media landscape that we have

now. And in competing for viewers and

for attention, that new media landscape

treated the pres office of the

presidency with the same attention with

which it treated Hollywood stars. And

some many presidents were very

interested in contributing to that. So

Bill Clinton famously went on MTV,

talked about what kind of underwear he

preferred. He played his saxophone on

our senio hall. He was everywhere.

political scientists talk about Clinton

as inaugurating what's known as the

ubiquitous presidency that the president

was somehow suddenly everywhere on the

MV Griffin show and now you know on a

podcast Trump's presence is of a

different scale altogether so there's a

continuum but I do think that Trump's

presidency in this regard is is is

without precedent but you don't get

there out of nowhere right so the cable

television which has all these hours to

fill fills a lot of it with just

nonsense detail about the president and

the president the white house becomes

kind of complicit in that. The more

attention the president has, the more

able the president will be to enact his

agenda.

>> Yeah. And then our technological era,

which is one not just of social media,

but of AI and algorithms like driving us

in directions we're not even necessarily

aware of. What does that mean for

democracy and for the exercise of

politics? I know you wrote about your

worry or fear even about how you repair

the fabric of democracy when the

technology is built to polarize us.

>> Yeah. I spent the summer in something of

a fugue state writing this short book

called the rise and fall of the

artificial state that advances an

argument I had made in a in a shorter

essay in which I argue that because our

public discourse is no longer public but

in fact is entirely owned by

multinational corporations

and overwhelmingly populated not by

humans but by robots. Right? So all

these platforms have become inverted

where there are more bots than humans

participating in our public discourse.

You know X is owned by Musk the richest

man in the world. Facebook and Instagram

owned by Zuckerberg. These are a primary

means through which in the United States

and in much of the world people acquire

their information as citizens about

what's going on in their countries. That

is not a liberal nation state anymore.

That is an artificial state. one in

which public discourse is is automated

by private corporations to ensure

political outcomes that are preferred by

those corporations to maximize the

profits of those corporations. When I

say artificial state, I sometimes think

people think it sounds like a like a tin

hat conspiracy theory like the deep

state. I don't mean that at all. It's

not it's it's not secret at all. We all

know um when you're getting your news

from X that you are you are getting

curated news that is coming to to make

it impossible for you to find common

ground with people with whom you

disagree or believe you disagree. What

you actually believe anymore I think is

harder to say.

>> I'm going to go back in a moment right

back to the founding fathers. But before

I do that, I want to bring in what

you've also said about how part of what

is happening with the president and the

administration is a reaction to what

went before and the deficiencies or the

wrong in some cases that you see with

the liberal left and some of the

positions of the years that came before

the Trump administration, which might be

surprising to people because they might

well be listening to you and thinking,

"Well, she's is clearly an anti-Trump

person. She's clearly from the liberal

left. You have found fault with with

positions of liberal America as well.

>> You know, this may be a fine distinction

at this point, but I think there really

is a distinction still to be made

between liberalism and progressivism.

So, I think that when we think about the

excesses of the left, I think it's worth

understanding them and admitting to

them. And yet at the same time, I

understand the inclination of many

people on the left to say there is such

a crisis right now. The last thing we

should do is admit some of the critiques

of liberal institutions are fair. This

is not a time to, you know, conduct an

own goal. And I'm sympathetic with that

position. I I get it. I really do get

it. But the long history of the rise of

the modern conservative movement in the

United States, you know, that really

begins in the 1930s in opposition to the

New Deal. And you know, a lot of what

the Trump administration wants to do is

is return the United States to an era

before the New Deal, right? To

essentially unwind all of American

history, to go back to a different

guilded age than the one we're in now.

But that opposition, you know, looked at

what its challenges were to come to

power and it identified three big

sources of opposition. One was the

press, which did not really celebrate

conservative voices in the middle

decades of the 20th century. Another was

the courts and the other was was higher

education was the university. And

conservatives were in this for a long

game. And what they attempted to do was

defeat these institutions that arbitrate

knowledge. That's what all these

institutions do, right? The journalism,

universities, and the courts, right?

They decide what's true. They advance

knowledge. They arbitrate questions of

truth and falsity. Uh and conservatives

wanted to defeat all of them. And you

know, their success with the courts was

phenomenal. They essentially took over

the federal judiciary and have very

successfully done so both in terms of

personnel in terms of ideology.

Journalism they founded an alternative

journalism, right? They finded an an

alternative press and then just

attempted to discredit what is now

people agree to call the mainstream

media which is in fact the press as I

understand it. And what was hardest of

all was to topple higher education

because higher education has been such a

vehicle for mobilization, for economic

growth, and for social mobility in the

United States and has been so

democratized in in the wake of the

Second World War.

>> And do you feel that because you're

speaking to us from Harvard, which is,

you know, the institution, the

educational institution more than any

other in the in the president's sights.

>> Do I feel that higher education was the

hardest nut to crack? It just is. I

think that has taken the longest.

>> Does it feel like the front line where

you are right now?

>> You absolutely are. But, you know, I

think there's something worth keeping in

perspective. The people on the front

line are the people who are being

rounded up by masked agents on the

streets of these of of our country and

thrown into vans and deported. This

university is struggling for sure and is

being unfairly targeted and it's it's

contemptable and must be condemned at

every turn. But the actual suffering in

this country, I I'm I'm very sorry for

international students who aren't able

to be here. Uh it's tragic that labs

that are doing essential medical

research are shutting down. We're not

admitting students to do basic research

in the sciences. These are horrible

things

>> and real things. I guess I I'm keen to

understand how it feels on campus. Like

>> how it feels on campus.

>> Yeah.

>> How it feels on campus is surprising

that our students are not out there

protesting every day.

Why do you think that is?

>> I don't know. Why do you think that is?

I am baffled. This baffles me.

>> Fear,

exhaustion,

overload.

>> I don't have I don't I honestly don't

have an answer. I I have no answer to

this question. Every day I walk across

the yard and I say, "Where is

everybody?"

And and maybe the reason it's not

happening is that so much is most of

those people are do not have the

vehicles that you and I do to call

people to pull strings to to make voices

heard.

>> I think that's too easy of an answer.

We're not going to get to the bottom of

that.

>> Okay. Well, let's go let's go right back

then because I've been promising this

for a while to the period that you spent

so much time thinking about the founding

fathers. And I I do want to tell you

that through of all things a celebrity

TV ancestry program, I found out that I

have a connection to Massachusetts, your

home state, and that I've got ancestors

who were at the forefront of the

beginning of the revolution in Boston

and, you know, were were riding out from

Boston, defending Boston against the

British. And um it makes me feel

suddenly connected to that period in

American history in a way I never would

have before. But when you think back to

that time and with your knowledge

obviously of the present, what do you

think the founding fathers would have

made of America at at 250?

>> So I'm going to object to the question

very respectfully.

Calling the framers of the constitution

the founding fathers was an invention

and a coinage of Warren G. Harding in

1916, I believe, at a time when the

constitution was being speedily amended

by the progressives of that era, the

progressive era. There were four

constitutional amendments ratified

between 1913 and 1920. And

constitutional conservatives of the day

were outraged by this. They opposed

every single one from the 16th

amendment, which granted Congress the

power to tax income, to the 20th

Amendment, which granted women the right

to vote. Harding was among those who

opposed amending the constitution and

was part of founding what is really the

ancestor of today's originalism which

was the constitutional conservatism of

the day and one of the ways one of the

ways he did that was by talking about

the founding fathers as our personal

ancestors um whom we should worship and

whose work was divinely inspired and

they wrote a document that should be

considered scripture and I um it's like

the question

is this unprecedented it's one of

questions and I'm always like don't ask

me this question.

>> Can I point out I did not say the words

is this unprecedented.

>> You didn't and I I I'm not I'm not

trying to be I take the wider point.

>> I actually just really think like I have

been asked on national television who's

your favorite founding father or which

founding father would you like to have

dinner with? I don't want to have dinner

with these people. They're dead. They've

been dead for a very long time. They

lived in a different era. They lived in

an era where women died in childirth.

Your children all died of disease and

malaria. I don't want to go back to that

time. I don't worship that time. I thank

them for the constitution that we have

for the sacrifices of the revolutionary

generation in fighting a perilous

extraordinary war. Fieldy fidelity

worship veneration for me seemed to be

antithetical to the spirit of

Americanism. So I don't have that. And I

just drives me a little baddy the way

historians get kind of coralled into it

by questions that have become the go-to

questions to ask historians.

>> But is it even broader than that? I

wonder. Are you saying you don't you you

don't like the term founding fathers at

all? Are there shades of the cult of the

presidency or

generally a sort of over elevation? They

were exclusionary people, right? You've

got I mean not just Native Americans,

people of color, largely women often.

You've got this brilliant bit in We the

People where you detail Abigail Adams

writing to her husband and saying,

"Remember the ladies." If you don't put

us in the picture, and you need to

because all men are tyrants, we will

ferment a rebellion.

>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean I do think the reason

I wrote this particular book was I just

think we need a better constitutional

history that accounts for as best one

can between the pages of okay it's a big

book but it you know could have been a

lot longer the views of ordinary people

who do have constitutional opinions and

most of whom have been disenfranchised

for much of American history and yet

have engaged in constitutional debate

have gathered in de facto constitutional

conventions. Black Americans did so.

Native Americans did s have have have

and continue to hold of course

constitutional conventions. Women held

constitutional conventions in the 19th

century. There are the fundamental tools

of democratic self-governance governance

are representation participation and

deliberation and people who couldn't be

necessarily represented or participated

nevertheless deliberated and their

deliberations have never been quoted by

the Supreme Court as having any

implication for our understanding of the

constitution and they lie entirely

outside the realm of how the law thinks

about the constitution but they don't

lie outside the realm of how history

accounts for the history of the

constitution. So I really wanted to

write a book really I you know taking

seriously we the people what are what

what have people wanted from the

constitution have people understood its

merits and its weaknesses

what they thought had needed changing

how they failed or succeeded in changing

it conservatives liberals progressives

all over the place some of the people in

this book that I think have been least

attended to by not only by the courts

but also by history are conservatives

who have had extraordinary effect on the

constit constitution outside formal

amendment that is worth chronicling and

paying attention to.

>> I'm going to bring it back to one person

to end and that's you. This is the

Bloomberg weekend interview. Where does

your mind go at the weekend? Because I

get the impression that you move between

the present and the past all the time in

your mind. What's your what's your safe

place that you can retreat to?

>> Oh,

>> physical or metaphorical?

>> I raise sheep. I spend a lot of time on

the farm and I read a lot of poetry. I

really believe in the importance of

experiencing oneself as fully human and

disconnecting. I am a person who has not

and has never been on social media. I do

not intend to spend a minute of my life

engaging with a medium that I think has

been catastrophic for humanity. I mean,

I would I would go so far as to say

that. It has certainly been destructive

of democracy and of liberal nation

states around the world. So yeah, poetry

is good.

>> What poetry do you return to?

>> Um, is it Whitman?

>> I will read I will read anything.

>> Great Americans.

>> Yeah, we have a we have a fairly big

library of poetry. My husband is a big

reader of poetry.

In the first 100 days of Trump's

presidency, I read the first hundred of

the Penguin Little Black Classics, one a

day. And there's a new Penguin set. I

think it's called the penguin archive

that I am just about to embark on one a

day.

>> Jillip, we let you get back to the sheep

or the poetry or the students,

whatever's next. Thank you so much.

>> Thank you.

And that's where we wrapped things up.

Jill joined us from the Harvard studio

and thus thank you Nicole Gidio at

Harvard for making it happen. Here the

producers are Jessica Beck and Chris

Martlu. The video producer is Andy

Haywood. Social media is by Alex Morgan.

And our music is by Bart Wshaw. The

executive producer is Louisa Lewis. And

at Bloomberg Weekend, thanks to Brendan

Francis Nunham and our executive editor,

Katherine Bell. Finally, a reminder of

our email, michelle show bloomberg.net.

We do always write back. Until next

time, goodbye.