Announcer: Presentation of Dialogue on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great State of Idaho; by the Friends of Idaho Public Television, and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

With additional funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation.

Yascha Mounk, Political Scientist: When I compare -- away from Washington, away from cable news -- what the country looks like today to what it looked like 30 years ago, I think actually it's become better.

Marcia Franklin, Host: Coming up, a conversation with political scientist Yascha Mounk about identity, political divides, and the state of our country today.

That's next on a 15th anniversary edition of "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writer' Conference" on Dialogue.

Stay tuned.

(Music) Franklin: Hello and welcome to Dialogue.

I'm Marcia Franklin.

My guest today was part of a unique group in Germany when he was growing up – one of about 30 thousand Jewish people still living in the country after World War II.

Because of that, he didn't feel particularly German.

But since there were so few Jewish people around him, he didn't identify with that culture, either.

Yascha Mounk is now an American citizen, and his early experiences pondering his identity helped forge his career as a political scientist.

He's the author of several books, including "The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom is in Danger and How to Save It," and "The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure."

He's also penned a memoir called "Stranger in my Own Country: A Jewish Family in Modern Germany."

I spoke with Mounk at the 2022 Sun Valley Writers' Conference.

In our wide-ranging conversation, we discussed populism and democracy, the role of identity in politics, and why he's still optimistic about America.

Franklin: Well, welcome to Idaho.

Understand it's your first visit, your first fly fishing expedition today.

Mounk: That's right.

Franklin: Six fish?

Mounk: I had an excellent guide and, uh, I certainly love Idaho now.

Franklin: Well, I'm glad you're having a good time.

You know, uh, so much is going on in the world right now.

And, um, you had a, a recent article which talked about some of the potentially dangerous consequences that you see on the horizon.

Can you talk a little bit more about what your sense as a political scientist is of this time we're in and what some of the jeopardies might be?

Mounk: Yeah.

So, you know, when you look at American politics at the moment, um, there's sort of some basic puzzle pieces.

Um, I believe that Donald Trump is a threat to U.S. democracy.

Um, I do believe that, uh, the 2020 election was legitimate, and he was unwilling to recognize that, which is really different from what, um, you know, dozens of presidents before him, Democrat or Republican, did when they lost reelection.

Um, I think it's likely that he's going to run again in 2024, and it seems like he has a good chance at winning that election.

I think there's a real chance that even if he does not win that election, there's going to be attempts to, uh, politicize a process of certifying the vote in states around the country, in places like Arizona.

So there's a chance that some states may send a slate of electors to the electoral college who don't in fact represent the majority of people who voted in that state, which would be, uh, very concerning.

Um, and when you look at the Democratic side, you see a lot of weakness.

You see Joe Biden being very unpopular and obviously, uh, not the youngest guy around.

Um, you see that Kamala Harris, his deputy, is in many polls that were taken over the last two or so years, even less popular than Joe Biden.

And so I think there's a high likelihood that we end up with a real undermining of our democratic institutions or a real constitutional crisis in 2024.

Franklin: Do you think if, uh, President Trump is reelected, he's had, um, time, you know, he's had four years already.

Um, so that, that would put him in a stronger position?

Mounk: I think in certain ways it would.

When you go back to 2016, Donald Trump had never held public office.

Um, he didn't have much of a team of loyalists.

He had to appoint a lot of people who secretly didn't like him very much and actually tried to stymie all kinds of things he was doing.

Uh, I think if he were to be reelected in 2024, he would have a lot more experience of how to maneuver the federal bureaucracy.

He would have a much deeper bench of loyalists.

He would have much stronger control of the Republican party in Congress.

Um, and I think from day one, he would be trying to concentrate power in his own hands and to weaken those independent institutions, uh, much more, clearly, much more extremely than he did in 2016.

Franklin: So you don't think that the, what happened on January 6th is sticky enough to affect him?

Mounk: Um, it does appear that it has weakened him somewhat within the Republican Party, that it has helped some of his potential rivals for the 2024 nomination, like Ron DeSantis.

Um, but clearly, um, he retains control over a very strong fan base within the Republican party.

You know, I'm not a fan of a primary election system.

I love democracy.

I love elections in which most people participate.

And I actually think that average people, uh, that ordinary people have very good common sense and very good moral values and that they tend to make good decisions.

The problem with primary elections is that a lot of the time it's 10%, perhaps 5%, perhaps two or 1% of a population that decide, and they tend to choose pretty extreme people.

Franklin: Extreme people on both sides.

Mounk: That's true on the Republican side, it's true on the Democratic side as well.

And so, um, you know, Donald Trump doesn't have to be popular in the country as a whole.

He doesn't even have to be popular among conservatives all around the country in order to win.

He simply has to be, uh, the plurality candidate among, uh, Republican primary voters, which is a very small portion of the overall U.S. population.

Franklin: Let's talk about polarization in our country.

We hear a lot about it, a lot of dire warnings about it, um, and studies that show that we are highly polarized in this country.

But interestingly, not necessarily on, uh, racial, ethnic, or religious lines.

Really now it's coming down to party.

Mounk: Yeah.

The strongest form of, uh, polarization now is, you know, "I'm a liberal, you're conservative; I hate you.

I'm a conservative, you're a liberal; I hate you.

I'm a Democrat, you're Republican; I hate you."

It is political partisan polarization.

Uh, now that's very worrying, because that can undermine democratic institutions in extreme ways.

It can lead people -- on both sides, by the way -- to say, "Hang on a second.

I don't believe we've lost the election.

Everybody I know voted for Candidate X.

How is it possible that Candidate X lost?"

Um, because we're all in bubbles now.

Um, and if I'm really scared about what Candidate Y is gonna do to the country, then that might motivate me to say, you know, "That person's not the legitimate president."

Um, perhaps it even motivates me to go on the streets and protest and perhaps even use violence.

So that is very concerning.

There is good news, though, that actually on a lot of issues of public policy, uh, Americans are not that polarized.

Uh, there is, uh, uh, you know, pretty sensible majority opinion on all kinds of difficult issues.

Franklin: Well, "identity politics" is also a, a buzzword.

And it's a curious one to me because sometimes, you know, you can have two, uh, women or two females who that's their top -- on the hierarchy, that's what they identify with most -- have very different points of view.

So do you think it holds water, the idea of identity politics?

Mounk: Well, one of the interesting things actually, is that on a topic like abortion, there's not very strong differences in what men and women think.

There's very strong differences in what liberals and conservatives think.

Uh, but the average difference in views, uh, of whether you're pro-life or pro-choice is not very strong across genders.

Um, look, I think there's some forms of identity politics that are natural.

It's perfectly fine for there to be, uh, you know, an interest representation for Italian-Americans.

And it's perfectly fine for there to be an organization like the NAACP.

I do worry when we start having a politics in which our ability to understand each other supposedly, uh, is, uh, completely dependent on whether we're part of the same group, in which we're trying to make the receipt of a lot of public benefits dependent on which group we're part of.

Uh, I think the job of politicians is to appeal to as many people within the country, within the state, within the district as possible, irrespective of a kind of demographic group that those people are from.

Franklin: You know, I read your memoir and we're talking about identity.

Um, your identity is very interesting, and you write about it in the memoir.

You were one of the, you know, maybe 30-some thousand Jews who lived in Germany at the time; you were born in the eighties.

And you didn't feel German.

You didn't at times feel very Jewish.

Um, talk about that identity mosaic that you were dealing with at that time.

Mounk: Yeah.

You know, I've been thinking about it because Americans have been debating how to think about their history so much.

And, you know, as somebody who grew up Jewish in Germany, I was at the center of that country's debate about how to think about, uh, their history.

Um, and one of the sort of deep experiences of my childhood was that people could never really look at me as an individual.

The moment that somehow they found out that I was Jewish or I happened to mention that I'm Jewish, I was no longer, you know, a kid that they liked or didn't like, or was cool or probably uncool.

Uh, I became sort of representative of Jews and, and Jews who are representative of, uh, sort of the darkest episode in German history in the Holocaust and the Third Reich.

And, and so how people treated me became so dependent on how they felt about their own history.

Um, you know, if they felt deeply ashamed of that history, they sort of treated me in this slightly creepy way with kid gloves, you know, trying to prove to me, you know, how sorry they were for the past and how positively they felt, they feel towards Jews.

Or some of them said, you know, "I don't like that we're being made to feel guilty for the past.

So I'm gonna demonstrate to you that I'm treating you just the same," but, but in a way that actually wasn't treating me the same.

And so it's made me reflect a lot about how you can be honest about the dark aspects of a country's history as every nation should be.

Um, but not in such a way that it actually makes it harder for people to understand each other and to get along and to build real friendships in the present.

Franklin: Ultimately, you left Germany and you came to the United States and you felt more at home here and you've become a citizen.

You became a citizen about five years ago.

Talk about that in the context of identity.

Do you feel more American?

Mounk: I do feel American.

Um, uh, I, you know, it's strange, because I arrived in this country in 2007, which was a very different political moment and a very different cultural moment.

And so when I arrived, you know, I felt that finally I could sort of shed my identity in a certain kind of way, that I could mention the story of my family and where they come from and the fact we were Jewish, and it didn't define me in the sort of way in which in Germany, I had been defined by being Jewish.

And to me that was a liberation.

Because I'm, I'm proud of my heritage, but it is not something that's of deep significance to me in my daily life.

And I felt for a while in the United States that it was a place that allowed me to make the transition, to be somebody who defined himself by what I do, by what I write, by what kind of person I am, by what kind of friend I am.

Um, uh, but, you know, in a strange way, in, in the United States, the discourse has really changed in the last years.

And perhaps I was naive or perhaps the moment was different, but I feel like now I've shed the identity of a Jew in Germany, which was sort of representative of the most salient minority group that has historically been discriminated against, and now I've sort of become a White man in the United States and this sort of representative of a group that, uh, uh, you know, is supposed to, to, to atone for, for, for its sins, uh, in the past.

Um, and that's a slightly strange, uh, metamorphosis.

Because I didn't like being defined by that imposed identity of being a German Jew.

I'm not sure I would like to be defined by this imposed identity of being the sort of -- a White man representative of perpetrators in the United States, either.

Franklin: Do you think that, uh, liberals focus on these type of divisions more than they should?

Mounk: I do think that there's a lot of, uh, people on the left, the far left, a lot of progressives in this country, who emphasize, uh, some of the ways in which people have, uh, experienced deep discrimination and still suffer disadvantage, for good reason; that is an important thing for us to, to understand and to talk about and to remedy.

But whose vision has ceased being to overcome those kinds of divisions, um, and who have embraced, uh, a sort of essentialist account of identity in which that just defines who you are, who you can be friends with, who you can love, who you can understand.

Um, who, who you can stand in true solidarity with, in a way that, uh, I think is, is really misguided.

I, I do think of myself as being on the left, but the left has a long universalist tradition, a tradition of saying that the end, what we have in common defines us more deeply, then what separates us.

And I do think that in many aspects of our politics today, uh, big parts of the left are in danger of losing sight of that, um, in a, in a counterproductive way.

Um, in a really diverse country like the United States, one of the things that can help, uh, help us build connections to each other, help us have solidarity with each other, is a sense of saying, "Look, you might have a different skin color.

You might have a different religion.

You might come from a different part of a world, but we are both Americans."

And that gives us something, uh, to, to base our mutual solidarity on to, to, to, to care each other on.

And there's big parts of a left that are really worried about patriotism.

That think that the American flag is a symbol of hate.

Um, that's a mistake.

Um, you know, I think if you want to be a patriot, you have to own some of the worst aspects of a country's history and be honest about those, but you also get to own some of the most inspiring and, and, and, and soaring and wonderful, uh, aspects of a country's history, which in the United States includes bringing democracy to, to the modern world.

Um, and so, um, you know, sometimes we get into a polarized conversation where American history is either, uh, you know, all triumphs and roses, or it is all injustice and, and self-flagellation.

Um, and I think that's just too simplistic.

We can be proud of this country, uh, and love this country while recognizing that, uh, a lot of bad has also happened in the United States.

And when you look at American culture today, um, it's actually very dynamic.

Um, what people mean when we say, "We love America," is its sights and sounds and smells, its cities and landscapes.

Um, its sort of cultural scripts, which, you know, govern how we interact with each other during this conversation.

Even its celebrities and TikTok stars and you know, more frivolous things.

Um, and that is a culture that is diverse in a natural way, which includes the influence of so many people who have roots around the world.

It's a culture that's forward-looking, that's dynamic, that's not stuck in some kind of past.

And, and this is a point where I think Americans who are born and raised here sometimes miss.

You know, there's all these cultural differences within the United States, between Idaho and New York City, between, uh, White and Asian and, and, and Latino and African-Americans.

All of that is true.

But I'm struck being in this state for the first time, how similar a lot of our cultural scripts also are.

That actually, uh, uh, despite all of the differences between cities and rural areas and so on, uh, Americans have more in common with each other than we sometimes realize.

Mounk: But I do think there is a way that members of the American elite have of talking about the country which can be full of disdain.

And that saddens me about, about the state of the country.

And it's something that I think, uh, uh, uh, especially Americans who do live in that bubble should be much more aware of and much more self-critical about.

Franklin: You've written a lot about populism.

You really presaged what was going to happen in 2016.

And populism as we know it now, 'cause when I grew up the word "populism" didn't mean… Mounk: Meant something else, yeah.

Franklin: It meant something entirely different.

But um, how do you as a political scientist do your research; who do you talk to who's outside of your bubble to understand who Trump supporters, supporters of President Trump are, you know, and "populists," when you are in this, um, you know, in the major metropolitan area?

Mounk: So, so one of 'em is to try and travel a lot and to talk to people a lot.

Um, you know, I try to watch focus groups as much as possible, and that's become much easier with Zoom and so on.

Um, and, and, and I, I think that, uh, this country would become a little bit better if every political science professor and every pundit, um, and every newspaper columnist in the country was forced to watch two, three hours of focus groups every week.

Because, uh, it's very easy to think that, you know, most voters are ignorant, they don't really know anything and we don't agree with me.

So we must be bigoted and bad people.

And when you actually watch, uh, you know, randomly selected Americans try to puzzle through moral problems, puzzle through political problems, talk about how they feel about the state of a country, uh, you realize that most people are very decent human beings.

You know, when we talk about this term "populism," which I think is, you know, very loaded term and it's often misused, but as a political scientist, I think of a populist as somebody who says "I, and I alone truly represent the people; anybody who disagrees with me is by virtue of that fact, illegitimate."

Um, it often is part of a broader narrative where people say, um, you know, "Politicians and the elites are sort of corrupt, they're self-serving, and they don't care about people like you and me.

And so we need somebody who truly represents the people to come in and, and throw them all out and, uh, that's gonna solve everything."

Right?

The thing that worries me about this is, first, this claim that I alone represent the people, um, and it exists not just in Donald Trump, but it exists in the leftist, uh, uh, uh, uh, Evo Morales in Bolivia, whose Twitter handle is "Evo es pueblo."

"Evo is the people."

It's a perfect encapsulation of populism.

You see it on the left, on the right and the center all around the world.

Um, it's a general political strategy that anybody can use.

Um, so that worries me because in a democracy you always have to have countervailing institutions, right?

Even the president doesn't get to do whatever he wants.

Otherwise, there's no way to ensure that we can get rid of a president again through democratic elections the next time around.

Um, and the other thing that worries me is that nearly always populists don't actually keep what they promised.

Think back to what Donald Trump promised in 2016, how he was gonna make America great again, completely turn around the country.

Whatever you think about what he did well or badly in office, those promises did not come true.

Now, what, where I have understanding is that a lot of the time, the people in power do screw up.

The people in power do become complacent.

The people in power do care more about their own paycheck and whether they, they stay in office and, uh, what their friends think about them than we do about, uh, people all around the country.

And so I think I've come to be a little bit more sympathetic towards the populist instinct that people have of saying, "Look, this isn't working; why don't we try somebody new?"

I just fear that nearly always the people who run on that ticket are gonna do more, more, more harm than, than they're going to bring benefit.

Franklin: Your most recent book, "The Great Experiment," uh, takes a look at -- well, you can correct me if I'm wrong -- but the "great experiment" would be that America as a, as a democracy is trying to bring lots of diverse, the people with diverse backgrounds together and, with the promise of a better life for everyone, equally.

Is that correct?

Do I have that correct?

Mounk: Yeah, that's right.

Franklin: Okay.

Um, I was a little confused though, because I thought Amer... America's been in this experiment, it seems to me, for a while, at least, I don't know, maybe a hundred years.

Um, what is different about now that you think this is a great experiment that's happening now?

Mounk: Well, I mean, I don't think it's "now now."

I think it has been going on for a little while.

We can argue about whether it's been a hundred years or perhaps you can say, you know, 50 or 60 years since the civil rights era.

Um, but in a broader picture, uh, you know, most democracies have been founded when they were monocultural or mono-ethnic.

So Germany, where I grew up, uh, that democracy was established after World War II, when the country had become much more homogeneous than it had ever been.

And so it pretended to be inclusive, but it was easy because 98% of the population were kind of from the same group, right?

Uh, the United States has always been diverse.

It's been diverse since its founding.

But it excluded some groups in extreme ways.

And so what we're trying to do now in Germany and the United States, and in many other countries around the world, doesn't have much historical precedent.

It's to have these democracies that actually treat, uh, all of their members as true equals.

That is the attempt that we are, uh, undertaking.

Um, and that's actually a really hard thing to do.

Um, that explains some of the political tensions we see at the moment.

Um, but, but my book -- and I know it's unfashionable at the moment -- uh, is actually an optimistic one.

I think when you start to understand how hard what we're trying to do is, and how often, uh, diverse societies have gone wrong in the history of the world, and why there's deep psychological and historical mechanisms which make it hard, uh, we can be proud of how much we've accomplished, how much progress we've seen in the last decades.

And we can become a little bit more optimistic about our ability to keep making progress in, in the decades to come.

Let me give you one example.

It's, it's really just one example.

I don't want to overstate it, but it's an important one.

In 1960, 5% of the U.S. population thought that it was morally acceptable for Whites and African-Americans to marry each other.

Five percent.

Today, 5% of the U.S. population think that is morally UNacceptable for Whites and African-Americans to marry each other.

And by the way, we've seen a huge transformation in sociological behavior; this is not just what people tell pollsters.

The number of mixed-race babies has gone up in, in a couple of decades, in about three decades, from one in 33 to one in six.

I mean, often there's a political story that's added to it, which is that, uh, because, uh, uh, Demo- because white voters tend to vote for the Republican Party, non-white voters tend to vote for the Democrats, um, this demographic transformation is going to have this huge political and cultural shift, where suddenly Democrats are going to win all these elections.

We can fast forward 20 years and we know who's going to win the presidential elections, right?

I think both of those things are completely wrong in important ways.

The political story is wrong because you see where demographic groups often change who they vote for.

In the 1960s, Irish-Americans were one of the most reliable voter groups for Democrats.

Now they're one of the most reliable voter groups for Republicans.

In 2020, Donald Trump was competitive in the election because he hugely increased the share of vote among every non-white voter group, among African-Americans and Asian-Americans, and particularly Hispanics.

And Biden won because he significantly increased his share of the White vote relative to Hillary Clinton.

And by the way, a few months ago, we had a special election in the south of Texas and a, a district that's 85% Hispanic, which was won by a Latina woman from the Republican Party.

Um, so we just cannot predict, uh, uh, what this is gonna look like in 30 years.

And I wanna live in a country where in 30 years, I can't look at you and guess who you are voting for on the basis of the color of your skin.

That's the kind of politics we have to avoid.

Franklin: Do you think that there are some concrete public policy initiatives or solutions that can help, um, ameliorate this, or somehow sand some of the rough edges off of what's occurring?

Or is it really just up to individuals to "know thy neighbor?"

Mounk: It's a little bit of both.

So there's absolutely, uh, public policies and institutional reforms we can do, uh, to, to make people more optimistic, to make the country work better.

Um, we need economic growth, because it's much easier to get along with your neighbor if you feel happy about where you are at.

So I think economic growth helps to, uh, manage that.

And there's policies that that help to boost economic growth.

I think having decent welfare state is important.

I think making sure that people are, are, have decent lives, even if they get sick, have decent lives, even if they have an accident, is very important, but we should not play different groups off each other in that.

What kind of benefits you receive from a state should not depend on the color of your skin or which group you are a part of.

I think we need to build a public culture in which we have more respect for each other, in which we listen to each other more, in which we don't assume that if somebody disagrees with what I say, they must be evil or it must be bigoted.

But ultimately why I'm optimistic, it isn't because I think Congress is going to pass all be my great ideas.

Um, it's because when I compare -- away from Washington, away from cable news -- what the country looks like today to what it looked like 30 years ago, I think actually it's become better.

And, uh, we can keep building on that progress to build a country that's even better in 30 years.

Franklin: Well, I hope that we're both around to see that.

And thank you for taking the time to talk with me, and congratulations on your wonderful, uh, fishing adventure today.

Mounk: I'm gonna, you know, put that photo on, uh, on my social media immediately and show off me holding the trout.

Franklin: Everyone has to have a good fish story.

Mounk: I know; there you are.

Franklin: And that brings people together from all political parties.

<laugh> Thank you very much.

Mounk: Thank you so much.

You've been listening to political scientist Yascha Mounk.

Our conversation was taped at the 2022 Sun Valley Writers' Conference.

My thanks to the organizers of the event for inviting us back for our 15th year, and to the Dialogue team.

If you'd like to watch any of the 70 interviews we've taped at the conference, check out our website.

Just go to idahoptv.org and click on "Dialogue."

All the shows are also on the Idaho Public Television YouTube channel.

And don't forget to like the Dialogue Facebook page!

For Dialogue, I'm Marcia Franklin.

Thanks for spending time with us.

(Music) Announcer: Presentation of Dialogue on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great State of Idaho; by the Friends of Idaho Public Television, and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

With additional funding from the James and Barbara Cimino Foundation.