Best Holiday Books on Democracy and the Constitution

As we search for gift books to give this holiday season, our escapist summer reading lists may still appeal. But two new “serious” books offer positive, reflective relief.

Good history informs the present as well as describes the past, but great history also frames the future. That’s what Jeffrey Rosen and Jill Lepore accomplish in their respective gems, The Pursuit of Liberty and We The People. They animate our nation’s founding principles and the U.S. Constitution in ways that are encouraging and fascinating.

According to Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, the often-conflicting ideas of two of our most prominent founders, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, have been woven together in “productive tension” across the centuries. Jefferson emphasized individual liberty, expansive rights, and continual change, while Hamilton envisioned a commanding role for a stable, central government. “Whenever the threads have been pulled too far in one direction,” Rosen notes, “both sides tumble over, and the shooting begins.”

Consistent over time, however, has been political opportunism, as our leaders have made shifting choices about which Founder to cite. Jefferson’s views, for example, anchored the southern states’ defense of slavery and their right to secede from the union. His loftier aspirations gained renewed traction in the 20th century, when the idea of using Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends arose in the Progressive Era.

Both feared tyrannical despots: “[I]f Hamilton feared demagogues who would flatter the majority from below, Jefferson worried about demagogues who would thwart majority will from above.” Were they alive today, might they think their respective fears had come true at the same time?

In his conclusion, Rosen cites Hamilton’s agreement with John Adams “that the goal of a constitution is to temper politics with principle,” reflecting the importance of the document’s and democracy’s unwritten anchors. Harvard historian Lepore also highlights such roots in her revealing look at the U.S. Constitution and the people’s attempts to change it. She elevates the Constitution’s core “philosophy of amendment,” reflecting the Framers’ practical recognition that their efforts would be “imperfect” and that change—"endurance through adaption”—would be needed.

Lepore assesses the Constitution’s amendment provisions in Article V, which involve steps requiring supermajorities to propose and ratify amendments. In 1787, it was revolutionary and indeed experimental to plan for foundational governing change in any way. Lepore suggests the Framers ultimately failed, citing Article V’s inability to keep pace with the nation’s demographic, geographic, economic, and technological evolution. Such change, the only permanent thing in life, exacerbates our equally permanent differences.

Constitution-writing was also undertaken at the state level and by people left out of the original, national Constitution. The tribes of the Indian Territory, she recounts, produced some of the most expansive guarantees of rights in their 1905 Sequoyah Constitution, much of which was included in the new state of Oklahoma’s constitution in 1907.

As for the Electoral College, Lepore focuses on the closest we came to abandoning it. The House’s bipartisan vote to do so in 1969 was an overwhelming 339 – 70. A handful of southern Senators blocked the measure—with NAACP support, seemingly surprising today—and perhaps in part as payback to the Senate leader against the Electoral College, Birch Bayh, for his simultaneous leadership on a separate issue.

Lepore characterizes Article V as a “sleeping giant.” Whether you think it is actually dead or could stir again (count me among the latter), any understanding of our constitutional democracy’s future will benefit from the grounding Lepore provides, including her admonition to rely less on hope and more on determination and imagination to pursue paths forward.

Other books that can help us get through tough times are those describing solid historical cycles. National politics assuredly moves between action and reaction, and Samuel Huntington’s American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony from 1981 proved an eye-opener when I read it last year (thank you, Carlos Losada, for your re-review). He attributed dramatic change in America, such as during the Revolution, the Progressive Era, and the Civil Rights Era, to a common catalyst: the people’s sense that our underlying principles and beliefs were threatened or lost. When “the gap between ideal and reality was most obvious,” our “creedal passions” would rise to produce more consequential and organized change. Huntington enlightened my understanding of political cycles (as did Robert Putnam’s The Upswing, which I recommended to Fulcrum readers two years ago), and predicted that we would next experience such upheaval this decade; if not spot on, he was awfully close.

These books are gifts that will offer perspective if not comfort. May you and yours find meaningful ways to be thankful, to celebrate, and to help each other reach the next season.

Rick LaRue writes about constitutional electoral structure and amendments at Structure Matters.