Why Democracy Requires Renewal | Michael Dimock | TED — Transcript

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1. 0:04What happened 250 years ago was a spark that ignited the world.
2. 0:09When the founders articulated the principles of democracy
3. 0:12and proceeded to fight for and win them,
4. 0:15it inspired democratic conversations around the globe.
5. 0:20Now almost all of us can remember those inalienable rights
6. 0:24identified at the start of that Declaration of Independence.
7. 0:27Right? Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness.
8. 0:31If you remember your civics class,
9. 0:33that next sentence was arguably the more important one,
10. 0:36because that’s when they [went] on to say
11. 0:39that governments exist to secure those rights
12. 0:43and that governments derive their power from the consent of the governed.
13. 0:51Right? In 1776, that was the proverbial shot heard round the world, right?
14. 0:57And their audacious act of democratic imagination
15. 1:02also inspired a particular form of civic pride and identity
16. 1:07in this country.
17. 1:08This is a country united around common principles,
18. 1:12not a common ruler, a common history, a common faith, a common creed.
19. 1:16In a way, what binds us is this very idea
20. 1:20that this nation can be, hopes to be
21. 1:23an inspiration to future generations and a beacon to the world.
22. 1:28What we sometimes forget, though,
23. 1:30is that this system was never meant to be static.
24. 1:34The founders didn’t hand us a finished product --
25. 1:37they handed us an ongoing project
26. 1:39that requires engagement and creativity from one generation to the next.
27. 1:46So our responsibility is to carry that democratic imagination forward,
28. 1:52to make sure that this democratic republic doesn't become static,
29. 1:58or stuck, or rigid or even cynical.
30. 2:02So why am I standing here today?
31. 2:06I'm at the Pew Research Center,
32. 2:08and we care deeply about understanding
33. 2:12where Americans are and how they're thinking.
34. 2:15And to do that,
35. 2:16we ask people a lot of questions.
36. 2:19And we don't take that process lightly.
37. 2:23We believe that when we ask people to offer us their views and values
38. 2:28and opinions and concerns,
39. 2:30we're asking you to give us something precious, something private.
40. 2:34And so our obligation is to listen with respect
41. 2:37and to report on what we hear with care and with clarity.
42. 2:42And so what brings me here to share
43. 2:44is that what we're hearing from Americans recently is pretty dark.
44. 2:50It's a public that feels scared and stuck and divided.
45. 2:56But when we listen even more closely,
46. 2:59we hear a determination
47. 3:02and a readiness for innovation in the voice of Americans.
48. 3:06That echoes that spirit of the founders and Ioffers a path forward.
49. 3:12So let me start with the dark part:
50. 3:15Where are we today? What is this public mood? --
51. 3:17and bring a little bit of data behind it.
52. 3:19Americans are feeling sort of stuck in a doom loop of sorts,
53. 3:23and it's made up of three key components, three trends.
54. 3:26And the first,
55. 3:27I almost don't need to say out loud, is partisan polarization.
56. 3:30We no longer just disagree over issues
57. 3:33and which candidates can best lean us forward.
58. 3:36We've grown to, at a civic level,
59. 3:39mistrust and even use dehumanizing language about each other.
60. 3:44And America really stands apart globally for this level of polarization.
61. 3:49We surveyed around the world during and after the pandemic,
62. 3:52just to use one recent example we remember,
63. 3:55and throughout the American public was the most or among the most divided,
64. 4:00whether it was the outbreak, vaccination, government responses, civil society.
65. 4:07And after the worst of the pandemic was over,
66. 4:1081% of Americans said that collective experience
67. 4:16just drove us further apart.
68. 4:18That's more than in any other country
69. 4:20that we surveyed.
70. 4:22The second trend is [that] we’ve become more disconnected from each other.
71. 4:26Basic trust in our neighbors has fallen over [the past] 40 years,
72. 4:31and Americans have come to doubt the very wisdom of the crowds,
73. 4:36the collective wisdom that really is the foundation of democracy.
74. 4:40And again, America stands apart from other countries
75. 4:44in this sense of disconnection.
76. 4:46Last year, we surveyed people in 24 countries around the world,
77. 4:49and [the] American public was the least likely to say
78. 4:53they feel connected to their fellow citizens in their country,
79. 4:57and among the least likely to say even that they feel connected
80. 5:01to people in their local communities.
81. 5:04And the third factor in this
82. 5:06is that many Americans have come to believe
83. 5:09that our political system is just fundamentally flawed.
84. 5:14Basic trust in the government to do what’s right --
85. 5:17it’s vacillated, but it’s just fallen and flatlined for over 20 years.
86. 5:23And Americans today are more likely to believe
87. 5:26their elected officials care more about winning
88. 5:28those partisan skirmishes, and even enriching themselves,
89. 5:32than they care about the act of listening and representing their constituents.
90. 5:37And these three factors --
91. 5:38partisan polarization and civic disconnection
92. 5:41and cynicism about the political system,
93. 5:43they all sort of feed off of each other.
94. 5:45They each reinforce the other,
95. 5:47and they're accelerated by a fragmented media ecosystem,
96. 5:51by an algorithmically driven digital ecosystem,
97. 5:54to the point where what Americans are telling us,
98. 5:56they just feel the country’s centrifugal forces --
99. 5:59that we’re just getting pulled farther and farther apart.
100. 6:01The common bonds feel strained.
101. 6:05As we came into this semiquincentennial year,
102. 6:0959% of Americans versus 40% told us
103. 6:13that this country's best days are behind us, not in front of us.
104. 6:1859 to 40 --
105. 6:21I don't know, how would you answer that question?
106. 6:25And if you're thinking it's maybe behind us,
107. 6:28[then] what does it take to turn that lens?
108. 6:32I mean, it’s easy to get discouraged, depressed even.
109. 6:37The question is, what do we do about it?
110. 6:42And in my experience, that question almost always starts with each of us.
111. 6:46So let me offer three quick things.
112. 6:49The first,
113. 6:51I might see a little glow off of a couple faces in the dark theater.
114. 6:54We probably should put the phones down. They're not helping.
115. 6:59And maybe the way to think about it
116. 7:01is that our addiction to --
117. 7:04or commitment to, whatever language works for you --
118. 7:07(Laughter)
119. 7:09those devices [are] really taking away
120. 7:13our most valuable asset in our communities.
121. 7:16It's our attention, our ability to connect at a human level.
122. 7:20And that gets me to my second point:
123. 7:23we need to be talking to each other more.
124. 7:27And in a way, the American public today
125. 7:30has become afraid to have conversations about their democracy
126. 7:35because we've allowed the frame
127. 7:38to be set around our grievances and our fears
128. 7:41and our differences.
129. 7:42But there's a different kind of conversation we can be having.
130. 7:45It's what we're here for today.
131. 7:47It's about our hopes for this country and what we can be doing together.
132. 7:51Now I grant you, that's still a hard conversation to start,
133. 7:54especially with someone you don't know.
134. 7:57But nobody can take that small step but each of us,
135. 8:01and that's what becomes cumulative.
136. 8:03And then third, we have to remember that solutions are possible.
137. 8:08That the Constitution of this nation, signed just a mile from here in 1787,
138. 8:13gives us the right --
139. 8:15it actually gives us the obligation to take things into our own hands
140. 8:19because the founders, in all their wisdom and all their flaws,
141. 8:24understood that when any system of government becomes static,
142. 8:28it becomes stuck.
143. 8:30Right? So we have to remember that our democracy is dynamic.
144. 8:36And what I mean by that is not just that our democracy has to figure out
145. 8:42how to address emerging issues and technologies.
146. 8:45To be sure, the founders, I'm pretty convinced,
147. 8:47couldn't imagine this thing we're calling artificial intelligence
148. 8:51and offer us advice about how we should think about what it means
149. 8:54for our society, for our politics, for our economy.
150. 8:57We're going to have to figure that one out, right?
151. 9:01I'm actually talking about something more fundamental,
152. 9:03which is that the founders understood that any system of government
153. 9:09that's carefully balancing our liberties and governance,
154. 9:13if left still for too long,
155. 9:15sort of becomes trapped.
156. 9:17So take partisanship.
157. 9:19The founders couldn't have imagined
158. 9:21the Republican and Democratic parties of 2026,
159. 9:24but they absolutely understood
160. 9:26that political polarization was fundamental.
161. 9:28It was going to happen in any democratic system,
162. 9:31and needed to be attended to, or it would become dangerous.
163. 9:35They couldn't have fully understood
164. 9:37how large the population of this country would grow,
165. 9:40and its distribution, and its diversity,
166. 9:44but they absolutely understood that how we take the voice of that public
167. 9:50and convert it into effective representation through elections
168. 9:55was going to require constant attention and adaptation,
169. 9:59or it would get trapped or even hijacked.
170. 10:01I mean, look at what we're doing with redistricting today, right?
171. 10:07They couldn't have fully understood how huge this country's economy would be
172. 10:11and the amount of money in our system,
173. 10:14and how that would influence politics.
174. 10:16But they did understand, and you can see it in their writing,
175. 10:19that money was a fundamental challenge
176. 10:21that every democracy was going to have to balance
177. 10:24if it cared about representation.
178. 10:25And in all of these spaces,
179. 10:27they never thought that there could be one solution,
180. 10:30because every time you fix a problem, another problem arises.
181. 10:34That's not a flaw.
182. 10:35That's the nature of a democratic republic.
183. 10:38That's what we signed on for, right?
184. 10:41So we can all think about our biggest problems
185. 10:45with government today.
186. 10:47But I'm here to also say that we can think of solutions.
187. 10:50Last year we interviewed Americans across the country and asked them,
188. 10:53"What would you do to fix our political system?"
189. 10:57Boy, did they have a lot to say.
190. 10:59(Laughter)
191. 11:00At the biggest level,
192. 11:02a vast majority of Americans are willing to engage with major reform
193. 11:07to our political system,
194. 11:08out of scale, actually, with other countries of our means.
195. 11:12Their priorities would be: improving the quality of representation,
196. 11:16reducing the influence of money in our political system,
197. 11:19defusing that negative partisan tone that our dialogue just gravitates towards.
198. 11:24And they're willing to engage with conversations
199. 11:28about a whole host of reforms,
200. 11:30from long-standing ideas like term limits for members of Congress
201. 11:34to newer ideas like age limits for elected officials or judges,
202. 11:39or getting rid of the Electoral College or the electoral reforms.
203. 11:42There are so many ideas out there
204. 11:44that a majority of Americans are ready to think about.
205. 11:48Now I’m not here to advocate for any of those particular reforms --
206. 11:52each of them can be debated for their pros and their cons --
207. 11:57what I’m here to say is we really need to be having those debates,
208. 12:00and we need to take them seriously.
209. 12:03We need to have the courage to be willing to change a political system
210. 12:07that a majority of Americans feel is obviously broken.
211. 12:12When we sit here in 2026, and we haven't --
212. 12:15our society, our public, hasn't engaged in a conversation
213. 12:19about [a] constitutional amendment
214. 12:21in 55 years since we lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.
215. 12:25How many people here remember that conversation?
216. 12:28It was a while ago.
217. 12:30The previous time our Constitution went unamended for a stretch that long
218. 12:34was in the lead-up to the Civil War.
219. 12:37We have to remember that our democracy is meant to be dynamic,
220. 12:41and through our action.
221. 12:44But we've sort of become so afraid of what could be worse --
222. 12:47particularly, could it benefit the other side --
223. 12:51that we've stopped really imagining how we can make it better.
224. 12:57So I want to go back to the Declaration of Independence,
225. 13:00because after enumerating those inalienable rights
226. 13:04and after asserting that authority comes from the governed,
227. 13:07they go on to say that whenever any system of government
228. 13:12becomes destructive to those ends,
229. 13:14it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish that government.
230. 13:20Now in the context of 1776,
231. 13:21there's no doubt that they were saying
232. 13:24they had no choice but to abolish the system they were living under
233. 13:28and start from scratch.
234. 13:29But it was their hope that future generations
235. 13:33could alter and iterate on the framework they built.
236. 13:38The solutions are not just going to drop down magically on us.
237. 13:41It's going to take hard work.
238. 13:45But if this country is going to stay whole,
239. 13:49is going to thrive,
240. 13:50is going to be an inspiration for future generations,
241. 13:54we have to be willing to commit
242. 13:57to make those same brave leaps of democratic imagination.
243. 14:03Thank you.
244. 14:04(Applause)