The Future in Context

In The Cycles of Constitutional Time, Jack Balkin takes an overarching look at the dynamics of constitutional government over the history of the United States. To understand what is happening today, he argues, “we have to think in terms of political cycles that interact with each other and create remarkable — and dark — times.” Single-term presidents, Balkin notes, often coincide with the ends of these cycles, moments where an existing approach to political life has run its course. Since Reagan’s ascendency in 1980, Balkin contends, the dominating approach has been characterized by a lack of trust in politicians and big government. But, he suggests, the single-term presidency of Donald Trump could be another iteration in the pattern, and we may be moving towards a more progressive era. Balkin is the founder and director of Yale's Information Society Project, an interdisciplinary center that studies law and new information technologies. He recently spoke with Governing Editor-at-Large Clay Jenkinson.

In an earlier episode, Editor-at-Large Clay Jenkinson described America’s three constitutions: The capital-c Constitution drafted in 1787; and the small-c constitution of norms and traditions not specified in the written Constitution and the ways the American people actually constitute themselves. In this third in a series, Jenkinson suggests that even — or especially — in our norm-busting times, a president’s bully pulpit has grown bigger, stuffed as it is with extra constitutional executive actions.

Long before Admiral Sandy Stosz retired from the U.S. Coast Guard in 2018, she knew that she wanted to write a book on leadership. With nearly 40 years of experience to draw on, from her early days as an ensign on polar icebreakers to her final assignment as the first female to serve as deputy commandant for Mission Support, Stosz had gained a wealth of experience worth sharing. Though her career abounded in firsts for her gender — she was, for example, the first woman to lead a U.S. armed forces service academy — Stosz wanted to focus her literary lens not on the trailblazing aspects of her career, but rather on the extensive and varied leadership lessons gleaned from her experiences. The result is Breaking Ice and Breaking Glass: Leading in Uncharted Waters, published this month by Koehler Books. She recently spoke with Governing.com Editor-at-Large Clay Jenkinson

The author of a new book on the pioneers of the civil rights movement says, as different as the two were from each other, they were also each other’s alter egos in the struggle against racism.

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X rose from markedly different backgrounds to assume leading roles in the civil rights movement, and though each died violently while playing his respective part, neither man fully exited the stage. Both remain to this day celebrated figures in the fight for racial and economic justice. Their much-publicized differences, most notably violence versus nonviolence, have rendered portraits of the two men as opposing figures, but Dr. Peniel Joseph, in his dual biography The Sword and Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., argues that these contrasts have been taken out of context. The two men eventually grew into alter egos of one another, he asserts, and each transformed the other in important ways as their visions converged. Dr. Joseph recently spoke with Governing Editor-at-Large Clay Jenkinson about these two iconic African American leaders.

The author of a dictionary-like book spent two years recovering the lost language that Americans need in order to talk with each other about things that matter.

Distressed at the dearth of civic understanding in the United States, Ed Hagenstein worked for over two decades to create The Language of Liberty: A Citizen’s Vocabulary. Its purpose is simple: the constitution demands consensus and our form of government requires discourse, which depends in turn on a precise and nuanced vocabulary of its own. Hagenstein has set out to recover 101 words that are essential to the American experiment, many largely lost to disuse or misuse.

Show notes:

Mary Page Wilson-Lyons | TEDxBirminghamSalon

To borrow a starting point from Alexis de Tocqueville and the founding fathers, let’s pause to consider America’s enduring habits of the heart and how they can help us constitute a more perfect union

 Our resident humanities scholar and Editor-at-Large, Clay Jenkinson contends that the country is the combination of three constitutions – Written, Mediated, and Lived – and your experience with them may vary.

Audio courtesy of The Bush Library, The Clinton Library, YouTube, CupsofChamomile, Miller Center, CNN, FOX News Channel, MSNBC, NBC News, PBS, CBS, CBC, Tuts+.

Incidental music licensed from HookSounds.

The Constitution is silent on the number of justices on the Supreme Court. The independence of the judiciary is put in jeopardy when partisans settle political scores by rebalancing the courts.

Clay has been thinking about the promise and pitfalls of court packing.

On April 13 President Biden announced  his plan to withdraw all remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Currently there are approximately 3,500 American troops in Afghanistan.

With no consensus at home on the decision to withdraw US troops, Afghanistan remains a Grave of Empires. True to Thomas Jefferson's formulation that most wars end with the restoration of the status quo ante bellum (things go right back to the way things were before all the loss of blood and treasure). 

You can listen and subscribe to the full series of The Future in Context at Governing.com/podcast

A prolific and outspoken author contends the term "populism" has been turned on its head, and not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has the White House been occupied by a man of the people.

Thomas Frank is an unapologetic liberal and populist. Those characteristics shape his writing and worldview. He finds promise in the country’s original populists, who adopted the term in 1891, and who were protesting “unbearable debt, monopoly and corruption … forcing the country to acknowledge that ordinary Americans who were just as worthy as bankers or railroad barons were being ruined by an economic system that in fact answered to no moral laws.” Frank sees distinct parallels between conditions then and American capitalism as it exists today, complete with the stains of racism, sexism, economic inequality, and contempt for ordinary Americans.

A decade ago, Williston, N.D., became a magnet for desperate men, thanks to oil in the Bakken Formation. In an interview, author Michael Smith talks about life in an oil patch and the human cost of fueling the nation.