TECHNOS—Lee H. Hamilton

July 27, 2008

“Democracy is not an end result; democracy is a process.”—Lee H. Hamilton

Lee H. Hamilton was U.S. Representative from Indiana’s Ninth District from 1965 to 1999. He served as Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Joint Economic Committee on the Organization of Congress. He is now director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., and director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University (CCIU). He also served as Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia. Mr. Hamilton is author of several books—among them, How Congress Works and Why You Should Care, published by the Indiana University Press.

Elaine Larson, AIT Director of Education, talked with Mr. Hamilton recently and asked him about his book, about the Center on Congress at Indiana University, and about the importance of civic education.

EL: What was behind the origin of CCIU?

LH: I was having a lot of public meetings and in these meetings I found myself explaining the Constitution a lot to all kinds of audiences. So I left Congress with a very strong feeling that ordinary Americans really didn’t understand the institution, the impact the institution has on their lives, and the importance of the institution, not only on their lives but on the maintenance of freedom in our country. And the initial conversations about it occurred between Myles Brand and me when he was the president of Indiana University. This was before I left the Congress but after I had announced I would leave. I had made some public statements about my interest in doing something in this area. Several university presidents picked up on that and came to see me about it. The Indiana situation worked out very well because of its location but principally because of the resources of the university that were available to me. And I must say that the relationship with IU has been just superb at all levels, and we’ve drawn on the IU Press, and the [campus] radio and television, and experts like AIT in many different fields. So it’s been very helpful to us.

It’s a very simple idea. There are a number of centers of Congress around the country, and they do very good work. But most of them focus their work for the institution, for the expert and political scientist—how to improve the budget process, technical questions that are internally important. But that was not where I saw the big problem, so this center is one of the few that really try to focus on explaining the institution not to the expert but to the ordinary person. And as you can see from the book, it’s pretty simple kinds of things.

A big focus of the Center has been the Web site and putting all that information on the site. Why do you think it is so important to teach about Congress and representative democracy earlier than high school?

My own desire would be to have education about representative democracy and civic participation started much earlier. I’m no expert in curriculum, but I asked experts at IU what is the best time to reach young people with this information, and they said younger than high school—at the middle school level. So we began to prepare materials for that group, and we recently added materials like “Time for Kids” for fourth grade through middle school. I have been talking to several people about producing a book for very young children. I’m going to be talking to publishers of children’s books to see if they can do it and are interested. I’d like to give someone this book and ask them to produce a book for ten-year olds, and we’d be willing to support that. We constantly try to make sure our materials are understandable and digestible.

You say in your book that “cynicism is always the worst enemy of democracy.” What do you mean by that?

Educators agree that cynicism does hit older students, and that’s one of the reasons we want to target younger students. The more deeply [cynicism] gets ingrained, the more difficult it is to teach these principles. We put a lot of emphasis on schools and students, but another major concern of mine is adults who are not participating and who do not have a very good understanding. So I want to reach this group of adults, too. Therefore, we are now developing radio and television spots for this audience. As I described to the staff: I want to reach the people who have breakfast at McDonalds every morning. That grew out of my experience—I used to do a lot of campaigning and visiting in McDonalds because they and other fast-food types of establishments have become the corner café on the square.

We’ve also been talking with groups in Washington that can help us translate our materials into Spanish: National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), National Education Association (NEA), and labor groups. We’re exploring a lot of different relationships because all these groups have contacts all over the country. And if we can get them working with us, it will expand our outreach enormously. I have a meeting this week with journalists to talk about CCIU and what we are trying to do there.

You say that people are frequently frustrated with the slow process of Congress. Why is that deliberative process of Congress appropriate?

Governing this country is a lot more complicated than people think. One of the core responsibilities of Congress is deliberation, and you want a process that provides for deliberation. Deliberation takes time—these are complicated matters. You have to take time to educate people. If you look at a lot of the major legislation these days, it can take a decade to get through. So the process becomes very important. Democracy is not an end result; democracy is a process. The job of the Congress is to build a consensus, and you cannot build a consensus without taking time—without dialogue and discussion and debate—some of which is impassioned. You cannot just pass a piece of legislation and say, “Okay, we’ve got 51 votes in the Senate and 218 votes in the House and the President signed it,” and forget about it. That sometimes is done, but in order for things to get accepted in this country you have to take into account not only the feelings of the majority but also the minority. If you get to the place where you’ve got the votes and think you’re going to ram it through—there may be occasions for that, but it’s not the best way to get legislation through. You’re far better off if you deliberate, have a dialog, build a consensus, accept some of the ideas of the minority, integrate them, and you get sounder legislation that is more likely to be accepted.

I love your comment that we need more politicians—that being a politician isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Of course, the point is that political skills are immensely important in a representative democracy. And I think I mentioned in my book that no one ever asked me about my political skills; they always wanted to know my position on things and obviously that’s important. But nobody ever asked me how I was going to get this through. And you really need people with those skills in the legislative body.

One of AIT’s Best Practices videos [link to these?] is about Rover the Citizenship Dog. One question Rover always asks is, “What does it mean to be a good citizen?” So I’ll ask you that question.

I think a lot of people say, “I voted so I’m a good citizen.” Voting is an important part of citizenship, and we focus on it a lot, but I think beyond that is the question of involvement and participation. And what I’ve often found is that people want to be involved and just don’t know how. We try to make some suggestions, but that’s a very important part of civic education for ordinary people because the system is so big and complicated that you just don’t know where to go. The other thing I’ve found a lot is that the better you know your community the easier it is to get involved because you know the community’s strengths and weaknesses and you see problems that need correcting. I think we often say we want to bring about world peace or restructure Social Security or healthcare or whatever, and the fact is most of us don’t have an opportunity to work on those problems. But what you do have an opportunity to make a difference on is to make sure the handicapped have access to your building and make sure—like the woman who’s daughter was killed at a railroad crossing—that things that are wrong are fixed. This woman was totally outside the system, her daughter was killed at this intersection, and she got involved in getting a light at that crossing. So involvement is critical to good citizenship.

There are so many things in any community that need improvement, and you just have to be alert to it. In American life you have so many opportunities to participate in voluntary efforts. A lot of people don’t like the political process but there are many alternatives to that.

You mention in your book a lot of people you respect, who have been important in the history of our nation. Can you think of two or three people who are especially good role models for young people?

The example I use a lot goes back a long way: James Madison. The point I always make about Madison is that he was a little man—a little over five feet tall—had a pocked-marked face, was a lousy speaker, and I’m reasonably sure he could never get elected to anything today. But, of course, he was a political genius and the whole Constitution is put together with his force behind it. I use that illustration to make people understand they have to look behind the surface qualities of the person. There’s so much emphasis on celebrity and on superficialities—can you give a good speech, how handsome are you? Our constitutional system demands a very discriminating person, and I think they have to become more discriminating with the passage of time just because they are bombarded from so many directions with the media and all that, and it really takes intelligence to sort through it all. We say, “Well, this candidate looks good and makes a good speech...”, but you have to have a better assessment. So the Madison example stands out. I doubt that Abraham Lincoln could get elected today.

I often think about the Lincoln-Douglas debates. I’ve gone through those over a period of time; it’s a fascinating exercise—two giants struggling with the problem of slavery over a period of seven debates, several hours in each debate. The American politicians simply cannot do that. They don’t have the opportunity. If you look at the biographies of the politicians of the nineteenth century, they wrestled with four or five issues in their lifetime—slavery was the big one. Today a politician wrestles with four or five before lunch. The question is whether you can build that consensus behind all these problems and can you do it in time to save the country from coming apart at the seams.

It puts a lot of burden on legislatures and on the people. The discrimination and judgment needs are substantial, and we tend to be a little flip about that. “Well, he seems like a nice guy, let’s vote for him.” There is serious question as to whether this country can meet the challenges. I’m not a pessimist about it, but neither do I think it’s a slam-dunk. It’s a serious question as to whether we can deal with these problems.

What’s going to have to change?

I think the answers are simple. We have to get more involved and get better participation. People have to realize the importance of their role in the society.