Additional Praise for THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT
“In this fascinating compilation of interviews with historians, musicians, athletes, journalists, and other notables of our times, David Rubenstein paints what he calls the genetic picture of this country, and why it has succeeded—so far.”
—Nina Totenberg, Legal Affairs Correspondent, NPR
“David Rubenstein is a deeply committed citizen and patriot, and a keen observer of human nature with a passion for history. As fellow citizen experimenters, he is suggesting we all engage in thinking about the past and present in order to forge a future that fulfills the promise of America.”
—Yo-Yo Ma, Cellist
“In this timely and important book David Rubenstein explores the lessons of the past that will help us through this historically challenging time. It is just the right book at exactly the right time.”
—Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation
“David Rubenstein’s insatiable curiosity and intellect bring out the best from those with whom he is in conversation, evoking rich interactions and making history entertaining. The American Experiment, captures the essence of the American leader and the pivotal moments in our country’s history.”
—Deborah F. Rutter, President, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
“An extraordinary opportunity to marvel at the United States—and to understand her principles so that we might advance them in service to the republic.”
—Lawrence Bacow, President, Harvard University
“In this brilliant book, we hear from the best minds in the country about the unfinished voyage of American life. A must-read to understand our unique nation, its extraordinary legacy, and our collective future!”
—Admiral James Stavridis, 16th Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and author of Sailing True North: Ten Admirals and the Voyage of Character
“David Rubenstein has a unique ability to ask the right penetrating questions that illicit illuminating answers from fascinating people who paint a complete and detailed picture of the American experiment from all sides. As the country’s pre-eminent patriotic philanthropist, David is now doing even more to preserve American history with this important project.”
—Bret Baier, Chief Political Anchor, Fox News & New York Times bestselling author
Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.
To the public servants who protect our democracy
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
—Preamble to the United States Constitution, 1787
Introduction
The story is too wonderful not to be apocryphal: as Benjamin Franklin is leaving Independence Hall in Philadelphia at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, he is supposedly met by a woman—reputed to be Elizabeth Willing Powel, a prominent Philadelphia socialite—who asks him what type of government the delegates have given the country, a republic or a monarchy. Franklin’s simple response: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
For the ensuing 230-plus years, the American people, through extraordinary and at times existential challenges, have kept the republic. Creating such a form of government from scratch was an unprecedented, bold experiment in self-government—the American Experiment.
Without doubt, all fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention would be shocked that the compromises they cobbled together from May to September of 1787 (even with some subsequent twenty-seven constitutional amendments) have survived this long.
How did this experiment endure over centuries against all odds? Beyond the constitutional amendments, what legal, social, economic, political, and religious factors came together to ensure the republic’s survival? In my view, the republic persisted and grew into the most powerful nation on earth as a result of a unique combination of factors that came together in a serendipitous way.
I analogize this to our planet: had the mass that became Earth been much closer to or farther away from the sun, life as we know it almost certainly would not have evolved. That advanced forms of life occurred here required an unbelievable set of factors to coalesce in a unique way.
Similarly, had some of the factors that combined to create the United States not been present to the right degree at the right time, the country as we know it would not have been formed, survived, or evolved to its current state.
These factors—our genes—created a country unlike any other. There are many who believe that this unique set of genes has created the world’s best country, and that there is therefore a corresponding obligation to spread those genes around the world. Whether or not one holds that view, there is no doubt that America’s genes, as they developed, matured, interacted, and coalesced, sustained the experiment that the Constitution’s framers created.
But that experiment was not and is not without its challenges. The Civil War was the most existential challenge to the republic’s future. Because of their commitment to slavery, the Confederate states seceded from the United States, precipitating a four-year war in which about 2.5 percent of the American population died in combat or from its after-effects. And even after the Union won and slavery was ended, life for freed slaves and their descendants produced at least another century of second- if not third-class citizenship.
Though perhaps less existential, other significant challenges have shaped the country’s forward path: Reconstruction and its Jim Crow aftermath, women’s suffrage, the Great Depression, World War II, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq war, the fight for women’s equality beyond the vote, the struggle for gay rights, and the Black Lives Matter movement, among other major social, political, and economic challenges.
The American Experiment is clearly still ongoing. That was evident from two new challenges to this experiment in 2020—challenges that could not have been anticipated even a year earlier. The first was the COVID-19 pandemic, which had killed more than 600,000 Americans as of June 2021. The pandemic changed the way the country lived, worked, learned, and survived to a greater extent than any other single occurrence in American history since World War II.
COVID forced Americans to adapt to a remote work life, to worry constantly about their health and mortality, to develop a vaccine in record time, and to vaccinate a record number of Americans—all while dealing with the effects of a recession and enormous loss of jobs, productivity, and, of course, human lives.
All of those COVID consequences tested the country’s resolve and resilience. Of course, COVID-19 was not a uniquely American phenomenon. But it affected the United States in a unique way. The U.S. president, Donald J. Trump, openly defied the scientific and health-care communities, and both minimized and politicized COVID’s impact. And, perhaps as a consequence, the country suffered disproportionately—with 4 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. had incurred 16 percent of the world’s COVID deaths as of June 2021.
The second major challenge the U.S. faced in 2020–21 was the reaction by President Trump to his election loss to former vice president Joseph R.
Biden Jr. The result was a two-and-a-half-month stress test of democracy—really unlike anything the country had experienced since the outbreak of the Civil War.
From the day after the election until the day(s)—January 6–7, 2021—that Congress finally certified the Electoral College victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, President Trump and a large number of his allies worked hard to convince his supporters that the election was fraudulently stolen from him. Whether President Trump really believed the election was “stolen” (there being no real documented evidence of systemic election fraud), it is clear that a great many of his supporters did hold that belief—perhaps fueled by the president’s daily statements to this effect. A May 2021 poll showed that more than 60 percent of Republican voters believed the election was “stolen” from President Trump.
After the election, President Trump and his supporters filed sixty-five lawsuits to overturn part or all of the election process. But essentially all of these suits were dismissed for lack of proof or standing.
The courts’ consistent refusal to accept the meritless election fraud claims from President Trump and his advocates demonstrated the strength and independence of the judiciary—at all levels. (The Supreme Court rejected the claims that reached it, without any comment on the merits.)
The election administrators responsible for counting the votes in each state also demonstrated a commitment to a nonpartisan, democratic-values-must-prevail approach. Even the Republican administrators, often at great personal and political risk, consistently refused to succumb to entreaties from President Trump to overturn their states’ results.
The country’s political leaders were more of a mixed bag. It is not surprising that Democrats refused to accept the claim of election fraud. What is surprising is that so many Republican officials were willing to accept the fraud charges when there was no visible evidence at all for such claims. (None who supported those claims apparently felt that their own elections, held at the same time, were invalidated by any fraud.)
In the House of Representatives, 139 Republicans were willing to lend their support to an effort to overturn the Electoral College vote; and there were eight senators who supported that effort (led initially by Senator Josh Hawley, who was then joined by Senator Ted Cruz, both highly educated and trained lawyers). But before the vote could occur in either house, hundreds of protesters—“insurrectionists” who were Donald Trump supporters—overcame the small Capitol Police contingent and invaded the Capitol—the first such unfriendly invasion since the British burned it in 1814. Five individuals died as a result of the invasion, and many more were injured. Subsequently, hundreds of these insurrectionists were charged with various crimes.
The invasion shocked the members of Congress, who could have been injured, if not killed—but they were able to escape (in many cases just barely) to secure locations. The invasion also shocked the whole country, and indeed the rest of the world, a global television audience watching disbelievingly in real time. This was the kind of invasion one might heretofore expect in a volatile third-world country but not in the mighty United States, the symbol of Western democracy.
But it did occur in the U.S., and no doubt left an unforgettable, jaw-dropping impression on all who saw or heard about it. Just as Americans remember precisely where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated or when the events of 9/11 occurred, they will forever remember where they were on January 6.
Had Congress not been invaded by protesters, the effort to overturn the Electoral College vote would still almost certainly have failed, though the debate would have taken longer. But the incursion made the members rush to vote on the certification that night (and into the early hours of the next morning), and they returned to the House and Senate together to do so. And in doing so, the Congress showed that the democracy and the country’s core values—its genes—prevailed, but with a scar that damaged America’s self-image and the image of the country abroad.
But could the result have been different? Suppose Vice President Mike Pence had followed President Trump’s strong request that Pence not certify the results. Suppose, as a consequence, the election was determined by a vote by state delegations in the House of Representatives, where the Republicans had a majority of state delegations. Or suppose the military had decided to support President Trump’s claims, following a declaration of military law. Fortunately, none of those unprecedented possibilities occurred—this time.
Who deserves the real credit for ensuring that the 2020 presidential election process—and America’s genes—worked in the end? Foremost in my view is the judiciary: the federal and state judiciary, which made clear that the election fraud claims were in essence the only fraud involved in those cases. And they did so promptly, clearly, and decisively. Had they acted otherwise, there would no doubt have been more fuel in the arsenal of those seeking to overturn the election’s rightful winner. While the legal decisions did not by themselves end the efforts of those seeking to overturn the election, they thwarted the momentum of those efforts, leaving only a limited number of political allies and mob violence to try to destroy the democratic outcome.
In the end, U.S. genes relating to democracy and the rule of law proved too strong to overcome, thankfully. But the country did receive an unwanted wake-up call. A large number of Americans recognized that the country’s historic core values are simply not shared by all Americans, or at least not to the extent presupposed. And thus many Americans recognized that more work must be done to heal the divisions in the country, if we are to ensure that our effort to build a “more perfect union” can once again be a beacon for democracies around the world.
Despite the challenges from the pandemic and the contested election, the country survived, though not without real adverse impact on our healthcare, economic, and political-legal systems: more than 600 thousand Americans lost their lives in less than eighteen months, a recession took hold, unemployment increased significantly, the Capitol was invaded, the president was impeached, and America emerged with less confidence in its government.
But in the end, science was heeded, the pandemic receded (due in part to vaccines and the coordinated vaccination program immediately put in place by President Biden), the economy recovered, the rule of law prevailed, and American democracy proceeded, though not without difficulty and angst. That said, while our nation’s economy, health-care system, and democracy endured, the impact of these events is likely to be felt for decades, if not longer.
This survival occurred, in my view, because America’s genes ultimately came together and enabled the country to overcome these existential challenges.
But what about the next time a similar crisis occurs? Will the experiment in democracy be able to withstand challenges—internal or from abroad?
It is to be hoped that the answer is yes, for America’s genes are too strong, too embedded, too resilient. But we cannot relax, or let down our guard. And we cannot allow our genes to wither by a lack of knowledge about them, or a failure to appreciate what they have represented for the country and will likely represent in the future.
What are these genes that I am talking about?
Like the human body, America has an extraordinary number of genes—qualities that bring us together and have made the whole American Experiment work. In this book, though, I want to focus on just those genes I consider the most essential—the ones that truly have been indispensable to our coalescing to produce and sustain America.
America’s Thirteen Key Genes
Democracy. The Constitution’s drafters provided the country with a republic, or a form of representative democracy. The idea that a democratic government is the most desirable form seems ingrained in the American psyche and soul. The Founding Fathers abhorred a dynastic form of government. They wanted no King George or equivalent. That said, they lacked complete trust in their fellow citizens, thinking they might not be fully qualified or informed to vote directly for a president (thus they gave us the Electoral College)
or for senators (the state legislatures had that power until the Seventeenth Amendment granted it to the citizens). While the key to a representative democracy is majority rule, and that still does not fully exist in this country (consider the Electoral College or the Senate’s filibuster rules), the concept is built into America that democracy—the majority rules—is a preferred form of government.
Voting. Democracy is meaningful only if citizens have the right to vote and if that vote can have an impact. The United States has clearly struggled with this issue throughout its history—not allowing African Americans to vote (by law before the Fifteenth Amendment and by practice through the ensuing Jim Crow period), nor permitting women to vote (until the Nineteenth Amendment). Even today, efforts are regularly made in some jurisdictions to suppress minority voter turnout, by making voting a complicated, time-consuming, and somewhat arduous and painful process, thereby discouraging some citizens from voting. Those efforts accelerated in many states following the 2020 election, initially most visibly in Georgia and Florida. The right to vote has been hotly contested over the centuries, and even now, precisely because most Americans believe that voting can change governments (and their lives). A large percentage of Americans regard the right to vote as sacred and will travel long distances and wait for hours to vote, if necessary. That was evident in the 2020 presidential election, some voters in certain states waited a dozen hours or more in line to exercise their right to vote.
To be sure, Americans who are of voting age historically vote in smaller percentages than citizens in other Western democracies. Turnout of voting-age Americans for the 2020 U.S. presidential election did rise to 62 percent; the previous five presidential elections saw only about 55 percent. In other Western democracies, such as Denmark and Sweden, turnout has averaged over 80 percent historically. And, of course, voter turnout in nonpresidential elections in the U.S. is often dramatically lower.
The American Experiment Page 1