Francis Wilkinson: Why backlash to Trump could spark the 'Fourth Founding'

It has been a long night of terror for American pluralism and democracy. The Republican Party since 2016 has burrowed ever deeper into authoritarian terrain. You don’t have to be a political scientist to register that reality. Democratic political parties aren’t awash in lies and they don’t nominate criminals and coup plotters to leadership. Not so complicated, really.

Trumpism is a daily assault on many targets, including basic decency. But among them is optimism. When lies are common currency, and democratic values and practices are under persistent assault, it’s easy to feel despondent about the future. That’s why talk of a “Fourth Founding” can be both a compelling exercise of imagination and a momentary balm for political anxiety.

The great American historian Eric Foner cast Reconstruction as the nation’s “Second Founding,” when the Constitution was remade after the Civil War to expand liberty to Black Americans. Others applied that template to the Civil Rights era. In burying Jim Crow and enshrining rights in the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the U.S. finally realized democracy in the mid-1960s — the Third Founding. (The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the nation to immigrants from Asia and other formerly restricted regions, had its own profound influence on American pluralism.)

Each of those breakthroughs was preceded by crisis — the Civil War in the 19th century and the Massive Resistance of White supremacists in the 20th century. Is it possible that the authoritarian crisis embodied by MAGA could ultimately trigger another breakthrough — a Fourth Founding?

“I think we have the opportunity to do that here, hopefully sooner rather than later,” said Ian Bassin, executive director of Protect Democracy. “Or at least we can if we do our part.”

A Fourth Founding would consist of both enhanced rights for voters — a constitutional right to vote, for example, which has never existed. And structural changes to reform anti-democratic practices. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in a report on “reinventing American democracy for the 21st century,” called for a range of actions, including enlarging the House of Representatives, with smaller districts, to bolster connections between representatives and their constituents, and imposing 18-year term limits on Supreme Court justices.

Some pro-democracy groups support reforms such as ending the U.S.’s winner-take-all, first-past-the-post elections. They encourage multi-member legislative districts and fusion voting to enable smaller parties to wield influence and mitigate the polarization of a two-party contest for power. Legislation to curtail extreme gerrymandering and other power grabs would bolster the fairness of elections and representation — as well as likely perceptions of fairness.

Even in the light of a prospective post-crisis dawn, however, some democratic efforts might be more than American politics can manage. In an email, Stanford University historian Jack Rakove cites the inequality of the U.S. Senate, where residents of small states exercise more power than residents of large states. The problem, vexing enough to James Madison and other Founders when it was written into the Constitution, has ballooned due to lopsided population growth. In the Senate, residents of Wyoming, population 580,000, smaller than the unrepresented District of Columbia, now have 67 times the power of residents of California, population 39 million. “I bring a kind of Madisonian caution to bear, mostly because I wonder how we would avoid the challenge that undermined a couple of (Madison’s) key objectives in 1787,” Rakove writes. “My initial fear, then, is that we might face the same dilemma at another ‘Founding’ moment, with no ready way to resolve it.”

Given the antipathy that characterizes current politics, and a widespread lack of faith in both institutions and partisan opponents, it’s hard to imagine how we break into the promised land of a Fourth Founding without first engendering civic renewal. “There will need to be some sort of civic spiritual revival that is not about government laws and policies,” Bassin said, while noting that “there are government laws and policies that could help enable it.”

One such policy is national service, with a goal of fostering common ground among youth from different socio-economic statuses, regions and races. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences report called for a national service program “to inspire a culture of commitment to American constitutional democracy and one another.”

There may be tension, however, between the desire for a Fourth Founding and the desire for a less contentious political culture. Both Reconstruction and the Civil Rights eras proceeded not from national comity but from brutal conflict culminating in the abject defeat of the most racist and reactionary elements in the nation.

It is good to dream — and plan — of what might be when democracy’s crisis gives way to a better day. Meantime, the crisis continues. MAGA, undefeated, is vying for greater power. A Fourth Founding will have to wait until more urgent matters are resolved.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US politics and policy. Previously, he was executive editor for the Week and a writer for Rolling Stone.

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