Transcript: Explaining America with Richard Haass -

MS. STEAD SELLERS: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Frances Stead Sellers, a senior writer here at The Post.

Today we're going to take another step towards explaining America with Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, who is the author of a new book titled "The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens."

Richard Haass, a very warm welcome to Washington Post Live.

DR. HAASS: Well, thank you on this not so warm day here in New York.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: [Laughs] Chilly too in Washington, where I am now.

Richard, I wanted to start by asking you, you have devoted your career to foreign policy, and yet in this book, you turn your focus decidedly inward. You say that the greatest threat to the U.S. comes not from China or from Russia but from within. How so, and why did you feel a need to write this now?

DR. HAASS: We tend not to think of what goes on here as national security, but it essentially is, and when I'd be asking--ask questions all the time when I was out speaking. What keeps you up at night? What worries you? Is it China or climate change or Russia? And obviously, those things are of great concern, but history suggests if we are, more or less, united here at home, then we have a better than even chance of meeting those external challenges. But if we're distracted, we're divided, worse yet, we're at war with ourselves, there's no way we're going to have the bandwidth or the cohesion to meet those challenges, no way we're going to be able to meet our domestic problems to deal with those, no way we're going to be able to set an example that anyone in the rest of the world would want to emulate, no way we could reassure our friends, no way we could deter our foes. So it turns out the quality of democracy here ranks at the top of the list of our national security concerns.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: So "The Bill of Obligations" obviously plays off the Bill of Rights, and you have strong things to say about why a rights-based system is not sufficient. Tell us about that.

DR. HAASS: Well, look, rights are obviously fundamental to the American experiment. The Bill of Rights, Frances, which you just mentioned, was pivotal to getting the Constitution accepted. Several states conditioned their willingness to ratify the proposed Constitution on the acceptance of a Bill of Rights that limited the power of the federal government.

My view is that, as important as rights are, they're not enough, and don't get me wrong. I still believe that rights remain, to borrow from Abraham Lincoln, "our unfinished work." But even if somehow we were able to finish that work and put the realities in line with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, say, it still wouldn't be enough. Rights inevitably come into conflict. Think about it: a woman's right to choose and the rights of the unborn, someone's right to bear arms under the Second Amendment versus public safety, someone's right not to get immunized or wear a mask versus someone's right to health. So what do we do? Do we have gridlock? Worse yet, do we descend into violence?

So my view, again, is that while rights are essential, they're only one side of the democracy coin. The other side of democracy coin is obligations, what you and I owe to one another and what both of us owe to this country of ours.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: You are bringing to mind, Stephen Breyer's famous line about the toughest cases not being right versus wrong but right versus right. But I'm listening to you, and I'm wondering, why should our listeners overseas care about what you're saying now? Why does it matter if Americans are battling with one another about rights?

DR. HAASS: Well, it matters because "what happens here," if I may borrow the old phrase, "doesn't stay here." The United States is not Las Vegas.

Yes, we're only one country in the world. We're 330 million people out of a global population of 8 billion, but we are a quarter of the world's economy. More important, we are the hub of a system of alliances, of institutions that have worked remarkably well for the last three quarters of a century. This has been something of a golden age of history. Great power conflict did not happen. Life spans have been extended. Democracy's reach became much broader. Wealth grew exponentially. It's really been an extraordinary era. It didn't just happen. Good things don't just happen, and it didn't happen because of the United States alone but because the United States often not just acted but took the lead in fashioning international arrangements, building and strengthening institutions, building and strengthening alliances to deal with all sorts of challenges. And that's why I think this matters to the rest of the world. If we're no longer willing and able to play such a role, we'll pay a price obviously, but so will the rest of the world. The fate of the rest of the world, in no small part, depends on what the United States is willing and able to do going forward.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: So you referenced life--sorry--life expectancy growing and this sort of great economic boon time. We're seeing changes in those trends right here in the United States, right? A drop in life expectancy. People can no longer expect to live as long--to earn as much necessarily or be better off than their parents' generation. Is that what you see underpinning some of the rifts, internal rifts here, or the dissatisfaction here?

DR. HAASS: I see it both a result and a cause. It's a result because, in many cases, we haven't been able to come together to put into place policies that would help many Americans. In that sense, we're our own worst enemy, so there it's cause.

But yes, also, they're the result of things, and so the fact is that we're not able to do certain things for ourselves. And what happens then is when people see that, they get disillusioned, and particularly, if you're a younger person, Frances, certainly younger than me, just say you've come of age over the last two decades, what you've seen as a government, what? That's associated with two unsuccessful wars, with two financial crises, 2007-08 as well as the current inflation, a pandemic, wage stagnation, growing economic inequality, and so on and so on and so on, not to mention January 6th. So a lot of people are looking at the establishment, looking at government and saying, "Hey, this isn't working for me.

Democracy does not deliver. I'm not confident I'm going to be better off than my parents were," and either that leads to them sitting out--and we have a remarkable degree of non-involvement in American democracy--or it means they're basically open to radical alternatives, or they actually support radical alternatives. So that, you know, that's what happens when you get this kind of widespread disillusionment with the ability of democracy to provide.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: So a lot of what you seem to be talking about in your book is about, in a sense, creating a common culture of citizenship, and I was thinking hard about this. I took a citizenship test some years ago to become an American and learnt why there were a certain number of stripes on the flag and stars on the flag and the three branches of government and a lot of other basics. I came out of that with a--the privilege of being able to vote and also the duty to serve on a jury, but what other core values or obligations would you like to see instilled in new citizens? What should we be learning about coming out of those tests?

DR. HAASS: Just to say, as an aside, that citizenship you took and obviously passed, a lot of people who are homegrown could not.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: I didn't say that.

[Laughter]

DR. HAASS: Well, maybe not the first time. You did. I had a hunch you did. But a lot of Americans, we've seen polls showing it, couldn't pass it.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: Right.

DR. HAASS: One of the things we don't do in this country is tell our own story. We don't teach civics, or if we teach it, we don't teach it well. You can graduate from virtually any two- or four-year college or university in this country and not be required to take a course in civics. So when you leave, you have this diploma, but you don't have even a basic literacy about American democracy or American government. It's also true of many high schools around the country. We're not teaching that. We're not teaching information literacy. This is an age in which we are overwhelmed with information. You know that, given where you work, but a lot of what comes at us isn't accurate, isn't factually based. So how do we teach young people to be critical consumers of all this stuff that's coming at them?

So one of my obligations is to teach civics. Another is to be informed. Indeed, I think being informed, almost in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, is the most basic obligation of a citizen. We want people to be involved.

We just had, Frances, one of the most critical midterm elections in American political history, yet still more than half of the eligible voters didn't get out there and vote. I've got lots of other things I'd like to see. Greater respect for government. I'd like to see there to be incentivization of public service, of national service. I want to see violence for political purposes ruled out in America, delegitimized. That's the kind of thing that religious and congregational leaders could do. So there's any number of obligations, including, for example, to be civil, to compromise, just small things.

But, you know, for example, I try to tell people, why not be civil? It increases the chances you could get someone to agree with you, but even if not, even if they won't agree with you on this issue today, it holds open the possibility they might just be willing and able to agree with you on another issue tomorrow. Doesn't cost anything to be civil. Doesn't cost anything to be open to compromise. It may be better than the alternative of holding firm. So these are the kinds of obligations I'm putting out there.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: So I'd love you to talk a little bit more about a concept that comes up in your book, which is about self-sorting. I think of America as this being the "melting pot" metaphor. There's the "salad bowl" metaphor. Now I think we sort of seem to have a smorgasbord, where you can pick your own part and ignore the rest. But what do you mean by self-sorting, and how is it different from partisanship or identity politics or the other phrases that we're so familiar with?

DR. HAASS: You're right. It has become something of a smorgasbord, of almost separate plates, right? If we were in the Mediterranean, it's a mezze, kind of--

MS. STEAD SELLERS: Right.

DR. HAASS: --a meal. And that's what it is. It is very different.

Increasingly, Americans live very separate lives, often defined by geography, by class, by educational attainment, wealth, color, religion or church or religious institution you go to, gender and so forth, what social media site, what cable station you watch. So we have fewer and fewer common experiences.

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We obviously no longer have a draft that involves the lion's share of Americans. So it's very separate, and I worry about this because this was a country that was founded on an idea, and these ideas are in the Declaration of Independence. I'm the first to acknowledge we didn't always live up to them. We don't live up to all of them perfectly today, but in many cases, we've come a long way.

We're three years away, just as an aside, from marking the 250th celebration, but the ideas that made this country what it is, equality of opportunity, high on that list, well, that's what's meant to bring us together. But we no longer seem interested in that. We seem to be going our very separate ways, and that makes me wonder or worry, how are we going to pull together to meet any of the challenges here at home or abroad?

MS. STEAD SELLERS: And suppose we do nothing. I have heard you in interviews talk about Northern Ireland as a parallel, potentially. Are you really talking about sectarian violence as a potential? What drove you to write right now with such urgency?

DR. HAASS: I did spend three years as the U.S. Envoy to Northern Ireland. Then I had a second tour as the international mediator there, both unblemished, shall we say, by great success. But we'll put that--we'll put that aside.

And what worries me is that lasting political differences could give way to violence, particularly coming back to where we began. If people see their rights in absolute terms, they're not willing to compromise. You have gridlock, and then if one side gets what it wants, the other side, by definition, would have nothing. And then what? What happens to those who feel that the system is rigged against them? They get nothing. They feel they'll have nothing to lose. I think they'll take up violence.

We saw a taste of it, a bitter taste of it on January 6th. We've seen some other attempts at assassination or physical disruption.

Why Northern Ireland comes to mind, it's decentralized. It's sporadic. It's politically inspired. I could see it happening in Washington, in state capitals, at power plants, at businesses where people would increasingly act out their political agendas with violence. We obviously have a lot of guns in this country. I can't sit here comfortably and tell you it can't happen here. If anything, I kind of feel it could happen here. I'm not predicting it will. Nothing's inevitable. That's the good news. But it's also not inevitable that it won't, and that's again why I feel really driven to start talking about obligations and what we know. And I don't think we have the luxury of being sanguine. If I may quote someone from a country you know something about, Mr. Churchill, he used to say that "Americans can always be counted upon to do the right thing but only after they've tried everything else."

MS. STEAD SELLERS: [Laughs]

DR. HAASS: And yes, it's funny. It's a great line. Like all of Churchill's lines, it's great, but it's also a little bit sanguine. It basically suggests sooner or later, inevitably, the Americans will get it right.

And my reaction to that is maybe, hopefully, but not definitely. And that's why, again, I feel some urgency here. We shouldn't get sanguine. We shouldn't assume that just because we're the world's oldest democracy now, we're going to continue to be a democracy or a recognizable democracy. We too have experienced what the political scientists call "backsliding." We see it in various places around the world. We see Mexico going after its electoral monitoring authority. We see India going after a free press. We see Israel going after an independent judiciary. Why are we somehow so special, so different that couldn't happen here? I take it seriously.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: So before we talk a little bit more about the specific obligations you raised, I wanted to get a little bit more, the philosophy underlying some of the divides. I mean, it seems as if forever, Americans have argued about taxes and regulations and size of government. But as if now--and I certainly feel this when I go out reporting--there's a huge sort of gulf in worldview with two camps, believing that what they adhere to is quintessentially American. Are those irreconcilable at this point, or is there a way really, potentially through your obligations, I guess, of overcoming a depth of really worldview, I think?

DR. HAASS: It's going to be tough, and on many things, I don't think I've ever been called naive. I think we live in an era of narrow casting more than broadcasting, so people tend to gravitate towards media that confirms their views, more than it challenges it. One thing I recommend is that everybody multi-source their media. So in addition to reading The Washington Post, they would read at least one other newspaper. Rather than just watching Fox or MSNBC, they would tune into another cable station and so forth just to get something richer. Again, I think it's where civics in our schools, information literacy being taught. New Jersey, for example, just passed the law requiring that information literacy be taught in its schools. I'd love to see the other 49 states follow suit.

I'd love to see business leaders giving workers time off to vote. I'd like to see business leaders not sending money to candidates who are election deniers or supporting political violence. Businesses are citizens, according to the Supreme Court, when it comes to free speech. Well, then as citizens, I would argue they also have--they also have obligations. Obviously, I want to see parents use the dining room table as a place to talk to their children.

So I think, you know, so many people in this society, including journalists and others, have authority. They have tremendous reach, and if religious leaders can give sermons, they can give sermons among--about not turning to violence or the importance of compromise, the importance of civility. Journal--you know, newspapers and television stations can spend more time explaining what's behind the issues.

I don't think we need massive changes in the country. We'll always have significant numbers who are pretty much, to use a football metaphor, "in the end zones," but even small changes, 1 or 2 percent, could really create very different political dynamics and I think could get us to a very different and much better place.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: So that takes us right to the first of your obligations, which is be informed. You've talked about high schools. You actually did talk about parents, but I want you to now talk about the very youngest people. Is this not something that we should be teaching? Before, we're talking about high school and college graduates not knowing how to take a citizenship test. You are, in a sense, suggesting values, manners, the sort of common culture that comes out. It has to be instilled at a very young age, right?

DR. HAASS: Guilty as charged. iCivics, which--begun by my former neighbor, Sandra Day O'Connor, often reaches middle schoolers, and I think that's not too early to learn some of the basics of government and politics. But what you're talking about, isn't that what Sunday School was meant to do? Isn't that what parents and community leaders, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and other such groups to basically talk about certain behaviors, what we owe one another, about, again, the norm of not lying? That's one of the basic norms in a society, to tell the truth. Why--that can be--that can promoted by all sorts of individuals, and yes, the earlier the better. I think it's--you know, the only thing most Americans have in common is they go to school through the age of 16. Yes, there's homeschooling and the rest. Not everybody is in public school. I get it. But still, the preponderance of young Americans through 16 are in public schools. We ought to take advantage of it. That is one of the few opportunities we have to reach most of the people who will one day be voting.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: But, Richard, as you speak about that, one of the biggest cultural battles we've seen going on right now is about an AP history course. What do you make of that? How should we be finding a common theme in American history when people view it so very, very differently?

DR. HAASS: You're absolutely right, and what we're seeing is education being, at best, politicized. You might also say weaponized in some cases. I think it obviously matters deeply.

I've thought about it a lot. I actually got involved in Northern Ireland, where you had two religious traditions at odds, shall we say, with one another, unable to talk about, much less study, their past. We're not the only country that has these kinds of splits.

My own view is that what one has to do is separate almost a spine, a line of what happened, which is factual. Here are the documents. Here are the basic events and so forth. And then one can have various interpretations, legitimate, important but differing interpretations of what caused certain events or the consequences of certain events. And I think that's what one has to do.

We have to avoid having--trying to impose a singular or simple view of history as a framing or as a--as an explanation of all. I think we have to--again, we--to go back to what Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion but not to his or her own set of facts. So I think we need to have a common set of facts about American history, and then, yes, we can have different analyses and opinions about them. And that's where--I could imagine having classes built around model Congresses or Supreme Courts, debates and legislatures and the like. I think that would be a great experience for young people.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: Richard, you've talked about getting information from different sources. I want to read to you a tweet that you made about Fox News. The first amendment you wrote, which prohibits Congress making a law, a bridging freedom of the press, is fundamental to American democracy. With that comes an obligation to the press to act responsibly. Shame on Fox News for putting profit before our democracy. And this was about Fox knowingly lying to its audience. Shame. Is that enough?

DR. HAASS: Well, I would say it's not enough, but it's a start. As I said before, I would love to see corporations, as citizens, thinking twice before putting advertising on Fox.

You know, it's interesting. We've had such a debate in this country about things like ESG, sustainability in corporations, about DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, and so forth. Why aren't we having a debate about what corporations should be doing for democracy? As I said, let people vote, not contributing directly to candidates who are undermining democracy, not contributing directly to media outlets that are undermining democracy. I think that would get people's attention. If Fox is going to be motivated by profit, then go to the--then go attack that. Go essentially attack what their priority is, and I think that would be meaningful.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: Richard, we've had some input from our audience, and I'd like to read to you a question that comes from Barbara Taylor from Oregon, and Barbara Taylor says, in your view, how and where does the right of free speech intersect with the need to prevent the use of a social media platform or any entity that disseminates, quotes, "news" from influencing democratic processes through disinformation?

DR. HAASS: Barbara, that is a tough, tough question. The Supreme Court took two days of oral arguments last month to begin to deal with it. There are going to be some very big rulings, I would think, in a few months, probably in June, dealing with this about whether social media, whether the people who provide the pipes, the infrastructure, ought to bear any responsibility for the content.

I am conflicted on this. There's all sorts of content I would prefer not to be out there, but I think drawing lines is going to be extraordinarily difficult. The idea that we're going to anoint a bunch of, say, young people working at one of these companies to make all sorts of decisions about what is legitimate free speech and what is not--I don't know about you. It makes me extraordinarily uncomfortable.

So my own view is to expect the Twitters, the Facebooks, and the rest to exercise the kind of regulatory role we would like as a real reach. I'm not sure they're able to do it, given the volume. In that sense, they are very different from The Washington Post or New York Times or a radio or television station.

I then kind of fall back more on the consumers, and that's why I think courses, mandatory courses in information literacy in schools, could make a big difference. So my guess is it's going to take probably a mix of some slightly greater regulation or oversight, slightly more pressure on the companies to draw some lines, but also I think it's really going to be upon us, the consumers, to understand what it is we're watching or reading or hearing and showing greater discrimination.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: Richard, I'm not going to get through all your obligations, but the second one is get involved. One way would to have--would be to have everybody vote. What is your view on compulsory voting?

DR. HAASS: Americans have a visceral dislike of things that are compulsory. You know that, and I do. Australia, you technically don't have to vote. You'd have to show up at the voting booth, and then you can foul your ballot. But I don't think that would go down well here. I think anything that's mandatory or compulsory here, that will become the debate rather than the issue of voting. So I think it would be much wiser to have a conversation about how do we incentivize voting. I've got a--probably a controversial proposal that I would--you know, the right is always about voter identification. The left is about the ease of voting. Why not have a compromise? Why not basically start a conversation? If we were to have voter identification but have far more--you know give vote--make voting day a day off from work, extend the hours and so forth, basically increase the ease of voting dramatically, at the same time, we increase the confidence in the--in the voters, I think that might be a compromise worth exploring.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: Compromise is such an interesting thing. It's your third obligation, of course, and I want to ask you very directly about this very divided Congress we've had. We have had some joint decisions, though, over infrastructure and chips. How optimistic are you looking ahead that that kind of bipartisanship could help?

DR. HAASS: We've had quite a bit recently. You mentioned some of the infrastructure and chips. We had it on the reform of the so-called "Electoral Count Act of 1877." It might have been the single most important thing Congress did to protect American democracy that nobody noticed, and I think we'll notice it possibly in 2024 when we go through the process of what nearly led to--or did lead to an attempted insurrection on January 6th.

We had some mild bipartisanship on gun control legislation. We actually have quite a bit so far of bipartisanship on aid to Ukraine, on a tough policy towards China, opposition to trade. So we actually have a little bit more bipartisanship than I would have thought.

We obviously, though, don't have it on some really big issues like the border, on immigration policy. I think it's going to be hard. The next big test will probably be the debt ceiling, and I hope we have it. I pray we have it. We've got enough economic problems without a reckless and irresponsible use of the debt ceiling vote.

So I think it's really up to Republicans to adopt what's my tenth obligation, which is to put the country before party or person, and there's no reason--

MS. STEAD SELLERS: Right.

DR. HAASS: --to go against the debt ceiling.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: So in Maryland, Governor Wes Moore, our new governor, recently suggested that a year of service would be a good--might be a good option for high schoolers. Where do you stand on national service or a year of service in order to bring together this kind of sense of working together for the country?

DR. HAASS: I love it. California has many programs in place. I know Wes Moore is thinking of it in Maryland. It would get at what we were talking about a few minutes ago, Frances, this idea of the separate pots. It would actually give some people from different parts of the country a chance to meet. It would give people some good training, some good life experience. They'd make some money doing it. Then you could have a situation where businesses would hire them in the same way that they now hire vets, or colleges might give them a leg up in admissions. So I think it would be a great thing for these individuals, and I think it would be a really good thing for the country. And it would begin to break down some of the divide that any time you're doing something with the government, there's something wrong with that. So I think it'd be a win-win across the board.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: I have lots more questions I want to ask you. I'm going to have to restrict myself to one or perhaps two more, but Liz Cheney, she was putting country before her own position. Has that--has her loss had a chilling effect on this notion of putting country first?

DR. HAASS: Well, she's a great example of it. If JFK were around writing "Profiles and Courage," Liz Cheney would get a chapter, so would some of those secretaries of state who certified electoral outcomes, even though it went against their party. Those are all courageous principled stands.

But let's see. Let's see how history plays out. Yes, Liz Cheney has paid a price in the short run. My hunch is we haven't seen the last of Liz Cheney on the national stage. There's also lots of ways to make a difference in this country by not holding elected office. So my guess is, yes, she paid a short-term price, but in the medium and the long term, I would not count her out.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: Okay. Last question. It has to be answered in a sentence, I'm afraid, but you've been president of the Council for 20 years. You're about to step down. What's your single biggest lesson from that 20-year period?

DR. HAASS: That ideas matter and people matter, that there's nothing that's inevitable or baked into the cake, but history in some ways is what we all make it to be. And on an optimistic day, it makes me feel positive about what could happen, and on a cloudy day, it makes me worried about what might happen.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: Ideas matter. People matter. Richard Haass, thank you very much for making all those things matter on Washington Post Live.

DR. HAASS: Thank you so much, Frances.

MS. STEAD SELLERS: And thank you to our viewers for joining us today. As you know, you can find other programming at WashingtonPostLive.com. That’s WashingtonPostLive.com.

I'm Frances Stead Sellers. Thank you for joining us.

[End recorded session]

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