You could almost certainly fill entire libraries with books dedicated solely to the brilliance, the intricacies, and the legacy of the U.S. Constitution. It’s a remarkable work, and many scholarly works have tirelessly parsed through each section and clause of this deceptively short masterwork of statecraft.
So, it takes some gumption to believe that you have enough novel insight into one of the most studied documents in history to write a whole book about it in this day and age. The American Enterprise Institute’s Yuval Levin attempts to do just that in his latest book American Covenant: How The Constitution Unified Our Nation — And Could Again.
Levin’s book is very useful if you haven’t taken Politics 101 in a while and want a refresher from someone who is obviously very passionate about the Constitution and its role in our nation’s founding. But as a roadmap of where to go from here, it’s sorely lacking. Once you put down Levin’s book, you’ll have a pretty good idea of why the Constitution is such a unique and powerful document, but you won’t have gained much insight into how we can salvage its once-hallowed place in American civic life.
Levin spends the lion’s share of the book laying out the drafting of the Constitution, the delicate balance between the co-equal branches of government, and how the document has historically been the bedrock of American politics, acting as a unifying force even in the nation’s darkest hours.
In trying to establish the Constitution as the basis for American unity and solidarity, however, Levin falls into the trap of blaming both sides for the partisan rancor that has rendered our system of government nigh unworkable.
According to Levin, if we just turn down the temperature, talk to each other, and compromise, then we’ll be able to mend our broken politics. He argues that the American spirit embodied by the Constitution, “is recoverable now, not by abandoning the factional and party differences that appropriately shape our politics but by engaging in that politics in ways informed by common premises and a common sense of gratitude.”
But he never addresses how we are to engage in politics “in ways informed by common premises and a common sense of gratitude” with a major political movement that believes men can become women, that abortion should be on demand, and that the country is an irredeemably evil cesspit of racists and colonizers. How can you share a country, much less political power, with people who despise it? Levin would rather pretend that they don’t exist, or at least that they’re not particularly powerful. It all comes off as very naive.
Later on, Levin emphasizes the importance of having a population devoted to republican principles. That’s undoubtedly true, but Levin stumbles into a circular argument. Effective institutions create a virtuous citizenry, but a virtuous citizenry is required to have effective institutions. It’s a chicken or the egg argument: Which came first? Determining just how a virtuous citizenry is formed and how effective institutions can be maintained are vital points of consideration for Levin’s thesis, but he just glosses over these questions.
Levin, like so many other political commentators, hopes for a great awakening-style revival of American civic virtue, that everyone will just wake up one day and magically realize the folly of straying from the original intent of the Constitution (if only it were so simple). He never wrestles with the fact that almost every single institution incentivizes the exact opposite.
I hoped beyond hope that the final chapter would wrap it all up nicely and provide an inspiring message on how we can bring the Constitution, and its original intent, back to the forefront of American politics. But, like with so many other books in this genre, the last chapter came and went with nary a concrete proposal in sight, and I realized I had been taken in by another bait-and-switch.
Luckily, this brand of political literature has become relatively easy to spot. The dead giveaway is the “How …” subtitle that overpromises grand, sweeping solutions to the reader, while that “how” never appears in the text. You might have one on your shelf right now. Back in my more gullible days, I read an embarrassing number of these books, and I got duped every time.
I’ve come to hate these types of books from conservative authors. They promise to reveal the secret to getting America back to its founding principles, and you read 300 or so pages of platitudes and talking points only to find that the author apparently forgot to include the foolproof program to save the republic.
It’s extremely annoying, and it wastes the time of discerning readers. But what does the author (or the publisher) care? They’ve already convinced the reader to buy the book and read it all the way to the end. Any disappointment at a lack of true insight means nothing to them.
The thing that’s really so frustrating about this book and others like it is that there’s a great opportunity to lay out a vision of how the American people can reclaim their conservative principles and their republican system of government. But the author either doesn’t really have a plan to fix our broken system, or doesn’t want to explicate that plan because it might be unpopular.
He does offer a couple of suggestions, like empowering congressional leaders and eliminating the primary system, but these are more akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic than an actual political scheme.
The easy way to fix this trend in political publishing is to adopt a code of honesty. Don’t bill it as a politics book, and don’t lie to the audience about its contents. Bill it as a history book, if that’s all it is. There’s nothing wrong with a good history book (my bookshelves are full of them), and that type of book can reveal profound insights into our society, but they rarely lay out a proactive set of proposals for social and political change.
The harder, and ultimately more meaningful, way is to actually deliver on what the book jacket promises. Give us examples of how the previous 300 pages the author has spent outlining the history and structure of the Constitution can be used, concretely, right now to set things right. Otherwise, maybe reconsider writing a book at all.
Hayden Daniel is a staff editor at The Federalist. He previously worked as an editor at The Daily Wire and as deputy editor/opinion editor at The Daily Caller. He received his B.A. in European History from Washington and Lee University with minors in Philosophy and Classics. Follow him on Twitter at @HaydenWDaniel
