STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The writer Yuval Levin has been thinking about our frustrations with government in a divided nation.
YUVAL LEVIN: It's very hard for us 21st century Americans because we're not actually used to dealing with each other. We are used to living in cocoons where we're surrounded by people we agree with, and we just talk about people we disagree with. And the Constitution, over and over, wants to say, no, you have to talk to the people you disagree with.
INSKEEP: Levin wrote a book about the Constitution called "American Covenant." The Constitution's checks and balances mean your side wins an election for president, say, but the president is blocked by opposing members of Congress. When that happens, Levin says many leaders and their loudest constituents don't want to negotiate.
LEVIN: And what I will argue in this book is that it's a failure of constitutional practice above all, that we're looking for end runs around those frustrating dealmaking compulsions in the Constitution. We don't want to deal with each other. We just want to win.
INSKEEP: Give me an example of an end run, as you see it, from recent years.
LEVIN: Well, I think, for example, that we've seen presidents of both parties advance ideas they want. Maybe you want to build a wall at the border. Maybe you want to provide people with relief from student loan debt. And at first, they say, well, I need Congress to do this. I can't just do this on my own. And then a year passes. Congress didn't do it, and the president does it on his own. We've seen this now under President Bush and Obama and Trump and Biden.
INSKEEP: We could talk about Democratic presidents - the last couple of Democratic presidents and immigration.
LEVIN: Yeah.
INSKEEP: And the Democratic point of view might be the president tried to negotiate with Republicans in Congress, and Republicans negotiated in bad faith. Even when we agreed with them on their proposals, they would then literally turn against the proposal, which literally happened this year on immigration, by the way. How are you supposed to deal with an opposition that essentially doesn't buy the idea of negotiation at all?
LEVIN: So I agree with that. But that doesn't mean that we therefore have the option of going around the system and presidents using power they don't really have and courts using power they don't really have or Congress delegating power that belongs to it than instead wanting to sit around and watch the president do what he does and comment. Ultimately, there has to be accountability to voters for failing to address issues that matter to voters.
INSKEEP: Let's talk about the other side - people who identify as conservative...
LEVIN: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...As you do. A lot of them are talking about reinterpreting the Constitution should they win this fall's election. What do you make of some of those ideas?
LEVIN: Well, I worry about them. I think there are a couple of worrisome trends on the right as well. One of them has to do with a renewed interest in judicial activism on the right, which is no coincidence. There's a majority of the Supreme Court now that was appointed by Republican presidents. I think the role of the courts is to decide what the law is, not what the law should be.
And I think there's no question that in the Trump era, Republicans have been very reckless and careless about constitutional boundaries. Some of that is a function of Trump himself. Some of that is a function of people using this moment as an opportunity. And I think a reacquaintance with the Constitution would have to restrain Republicans at least as much as Democrats.
INSKEEP: Well, let's talk through that. You do have former President Trump who has said that he would not want to be a dictator, except on Day 1, when he's going to do his most important things. He has continually defined what is legal and proper as what he wants. And there are conservative intellectuals who would like to move in that direction and give it an intellectual framework - say that the president should be allowed to do whatever he wants. What do you make of that?
LEVIN: Well, there's no defending that. Our system is very clear that the president doesn't get to do what he wants, that the president is ultimately accountable both to a voting public and to the laws. The president is an executive. A lot of it is just rhetoric. But to the extent that it's rhetoric by someone who wants to be president again, I think it's a serious problem.
INSKEEP: Some of the people associated with the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 and various other projects out there have talked about rethinking the president's powers, saying, for example, that maybe a president doesn't have to spend money just because Congress has appropriated it.
LEVIN: Yeah. Well, this is an old question, the question of impoundment, which has been a subject of a lot of tension between the branches. I think the answer to that question is actually not obvious. I don't think the president has the power to impound. Also, there's a law from 1974 that says that the president can't do that. So that - quite apart from the constitutional matter, it's not obvious to me that just as a simple legal matter, you could do it.
INSKEEP: But there is...
LEVIN: That is a serious question. That's a long-standing...
INSKEEP: But there's a vision of the presidency where you can say, I get to interpret the Constitution. That law is unconstitutional. I don't want to send the aid to Ukraine. I'm not going to do it.
LEVIN: So look, at the end of the day, the different branches of our government do have some power to interpret the Constitution. But ultimately, the Supreme Court is the final arbiter and interpreter. The Trump administration - the first time he was president - ultimately did abide by court orders, and they better do it again. There's no excuse for refusing to abide by a court order. And if that's what they plan to do, it would be absolutely unacceptable.
INSKEEP: There's also the point of view that because of the unitary theory of executive power, that various commissions - the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission - that they're all unconstitutional.
LEVIN: Yeah. Well, I don't think they're unconstitutional, but I do think that they have to be accountable to the president. Everything in our government has to be in one of the three branches. And I do think that there is a problem when we think of administrative agencies as a kind of independent fourth branch of government. The administrative agencies...
INSKEEP: Would you include even the Federal Reserve in that?
LEVIN: Well, yeah, in a sense, I would. I think the Federal Reserve needs to have some independence from policymakers, but it can't be that we have agencies that simply are not accountable to the public through any mechanism.
INSKEEP: I want to ask one other big question. People go into election times, especially recently, fearing that they're not just going to lose but that they're going to lose forever. Does the Constitution answer that fear?
LEVIN: Well, the ironic thing about that fear is that it's intensified in the 21st century, when, in fact, we've had a lot of back and forth between the parties and when every election has been close. The idea that if we lose this election, we will lose everything is less true in the 21st century - not more - than it has been through most of American history. And so in a funny way, we've come to think of the stakes of our elections as impossibly high exactly in the moment when those stakes are lower than usual. I think the Constitution, if we become better acquainted with it, can remind us of that - that no election is about everything, and no election is ultimate and final.
INSKEEP: Yuval Levin is the author of "American Covenant." Thanks so much.
LEVIN: Thank you very much.
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