Flynn is the president of Common Cause, one of the nation's oldest democracy reform advocacy organizations.
President Biden speaks frequently about democracy. He mentioned it 11 times in his inaugural address. But words must be matched with collective leadership. As he said in that speech, “we will lead not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example.”
The United States will put this to the test when the Biden administration convenes a Summit for Democracy this week with representatives from more than 100 nations. The summit will “set an affirmative agenda for democratic renewal around the world,” according to the president. It will launch a “year of action” to “make democracies more responsive and resilient.”
It comes at a precarious time for U.S. democracy. After voters showed up in record numbers in 2020, state legislatures in 19 states passed 33 laws to make it harder to vote. Many of these laws disproportionately affect voters of color, young voters and others whose voices are silenced.
The assault on free and fair elections extends beyond bad laws. Disciples of the former president’s Big Lie have focused efforts on installing loyalists to local election boards. One in three election officials feel unsafe at work and face a barrage of violent threats for doing their job. Partisan legislators are gerrymandering districts to silence voters and subvert the bedrock principle of “one person one vote.”
The summit could be a hopeful end to a year that began with a racist mob of insurrectionists storming Congress to attack the peaceful transfer of power. The events of Jan. 6 interrupted two centuries of this practice in a democracy that survived the Civil War, two world wars, the Depression and many other hardships.
The specter of election sabotage is dangerous. The world took notice. Last month, an international think tank placed the United States on its list of “ backsliding democracies ” for the first time.
Earlier this year, Biden said that “we are in the midst of a fundamental debate about the future and direction of our world, between those who argue that ... autocracy is the best way forward and those who understand that democracy is essential to meeting these challenges.” Hence the announcement of the summit as a way to “demonstrate that democracies can deliver by improving the lives of their own people.”
Democracies must be responsive to the people, who hold the ultimate power. But the undue influence of money in politics, structural racism, corruption and voter suppression can poison the well.
Congress has the power to strengthen our democracy with legislation. The House of Representatives — the chamber closest to the People — did its part on at least three occasions this year. It passed the For the People Act to protect and expand the freedom to vote with fair national standards, break the grip of big money in politics, end gerrymandering, and bolster ethical standards in government. It passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to repair and strengthen the Voting Rights Act and protect against racial discrimination in voting. And it passed the Washington, D.C. Admission Act to grant statehood to the people of our nation’s capital.
These bills (with the Freedom to Vote Act, a compromise version of the For the People Act) await Senate passage. Fifty Senators have voted four times to begin debate on some of them, but all Senate Republicans (with one exception) voted to block them.
No Senate loophole should stand in the way. The filibuster, as abused in today’s Senate, gives a minority of 41 out of 100 senators veto power over legislation being debated, unless it is subject to a filibuster exception. Those 41 senators can represent just 24 percent of the population.
Biden himself has expressed interest in solving this problem. He has spoken forcefully about voting rights. He has signed executive orders, installed voting rights advocates in the Department of Justice and nominated them to the federal bench, and tasked the vice president with leading this work.
But there is no substitute for legislation, and the time to act is now. Recently, more than 150 democracy scholars wrote that “defenders of democracy in America still have a slim window of opportunity to act. But time is ticking away, and midnight is approaching.”
If we are to lead by the “power of our example,” President Biden and senators must step up and do what it takes to pass these bills as quickly as possible. When our leaders embark on the year of action at the summit, this must be a top priority. Democracy is resilient, and they have the power to act. We cannot afford to wait.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers a keynote speech at the 62nd Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, in Munich, Germany.
Marco Rubio is the only adult left in the room
Finally free from the demands of being chief archivist of the United States, secretary of state, national security adviser and unofficial viceroy of Venezuela, Marco Rubio made his way to the Munich Security Conference last weekend to deliver a major address.
I shouldn’t make fun. Rubio, unlike so many major figures in this administration, is a bona fide serious person. Indeed, that’s why President Trump keeps piling responsibilities on him. Rubio knows what he’s talking about and cares about policy. He is hardly a free agent; Trump is still president after all. But in an administration full of people willing to act like social media trolls, Rubio stands out for being serious. And I welcome that.
But just because Rubio made a serious argument, that doesn’t mean it was wholly persuasive. Part of his goal was to repair some of the damage done by his boss, who not long ago threatened to blow up the North Atlantic alliance by snatching Greenland away from Denmark. Rubio’s conciliatory language was welcome, but it hardly set things right.
Whether it was his intent or not, Rubio had more success in offering a contrast with Vice President JD Vance, who used the Munich conference last year as a platform to insult allies and provide fan service to his followers on X. Rubio’s speech was the one Vance should have given, if the goal was to offer a serious argument about Trump’s “vision” for the Western alliance. I put “vision” in scare quotes because it’s unclear to me that Trump actually has one, but the broader MAGA crowd is desperate to construct a coherent theory of their case.
So what’s that case? That Western Civilization is a real thing, America is not only part of it but also its leader, and it will do the hard things required to fix it.
In Rubio’s story, America and Europe embraced policies in the 1990s that amounted to the “managed decline” of the West. European governments were free riders on America’s military might and allowed their defense capabilities to atrophy as they funded bloated welfare states and inefficient regulatory regimes. Free trade, mass migration and an infatuation with “the rules-based global order” eroded national sovereignty, undermined the “cohesion of our societies” and fueled the “de-industrialization” of our economies. The remedy for these things? Reversing course on those policies and embracing the hard reality that strength and power drive events on the global stage.
“The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending,” Rubio said, “because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life.”
I agree with some of this — to a point. And, honestly, given how refreshing it is to hear a grown-up argument from this administration, it feels churlish to quibble.
But, for starters, the simple fact is that Western Civilization is an abstraction, and so are nations and peoples. And that’s fine. Abstractions — like love, patriotism, moral principles, justice — are really important. Our “way of life” is largely defined and understood through abstractions: freedom, the American dream, democracy, etc. What is the “Great” in Make America Great Again, if not an abstraction?
This is important because the administration’s defenders ridicule or dismiss any principled objection critics raise as fastidious gitchy-goo eggheadery. Trump tramples the rule of law, pardons cronies, tries to steal an election and violates free market principles willy-nilly. And if you complain, it’s because you’re a goody-goody fool.
As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said not long ago, “we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” Rubio said it better, but it’s the same idea.
There are other problems with Rubio’s story. At the start of the 1990s, the EU’s economy was 9% bigger than ours. In 2025 we were nearly twice as rich as Europe. If Europe was “ripping us off,” they have a funny way of showing it. America hasn’t “deindustrialized.” The manufacturing sector has grown during all of this decline, though not as much as the service sector, where we are a behemoth. We have shed manufacturing jobs, but that has more to do with automation than immigration. Moreover, the trends Rubio describes are not unique to America. Manufacturing tends to shrink as countries get richer.
That’s an important point because Rubio, like his boss, blames all of our economic problems on bad politicians and pretends that good politicians can fix them through sheer force of will.
I think Rubio is wrong, but I salute him for making his case seriously.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.