Jill Lepore on Democracy in Peril, Then and Now

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: Jill Lepore on Democracy in Peril, Then and Now
Date: February 3, 2020
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Jill Lepore (Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer)

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Overview:

In this episode, David Remnick speaks with Jill Lepore about the historical and contemporary challenges facing democracy, focusing on parallels between the 1930s and today. They explore how Americans questioned the viability of democracy during the Great Depression, how they sought solutions, and what lessons might be relevant for addressing today’s democratic crises.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Historical Parallels: 1930s America & Modern Times

• The episode draws connections between the crisis of faith in democracy during the 1930s and current anxieties about its future.
• Remnick introduces this theme by painting a vivid historical context:
  “In the 1930s, you could count on the Yankees winning the World Series... and democracies dying from the Andes to the Urals to the Alps.” (01:15)
• Lepore emphasizes the global perspective:
  “At the end of the First World War, a whole lot of new democracies had been born ... and it all seemed to fall apart.” (03:30)

2. What Shook Americans’ Faith in Democracy in the 1930s?

• Causes included economic collapse, visible failures of new democracies in Europe, and the rise of authoritarianism.
• The podcast discusses how mass suffering and rapid societal changes led many to feel majority rule was not effective, prompting some to look to strongmen or radical alternatives.

3. Experimenting with Civic Solutions—Town Meetings and Public Deliberation

• Americans who still believed in democracy “really fought for it by trying to rekindle its spirit,” through debate and discussion. (04:36)
• America's Town Meeting of the Air, a 1930s radio program, is highlighted as a major civic initiative to foster public dialogue.
• Notable quote (Orson Welles, as narrator):
  “In the early American town meetings, a majority of all citizens ... used to meet together and determine where to build the new schoolhouse, how to run the new road, and what to do about Widow Jenkins of Strepper's Cow.” (05:56)
• Remnick describes the diverse, grassroots engagement:
  “You just really do get the sense... your kind of basic farmer is there, your union worker is there, the nurse from the hospital is there, the librarian is there. And people are really... struggling with working their way through these really big questions.” (07:21)

4. Power of Media—Promise and Peril

• Lepore plays a clip from Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” as an example of how radio could shape public opinion, highlighting both its profound intimacy and its potential for misuse.
• Remnick comments on the danger of misinformation:
  “Radio is invasive. It’s this voice in your kitchen... It’s incredibly intimate. And the very term fake news comes out of the 1930s.” (09:33)

5. Contemporary Democratic Decline: The Democracy Index

• Lepore brings up recent downturns in the U.S. ranking on the Democracy Index.
• Remnick explains:
  “According to this index, the United States first fell out of that top tier category in 2016 and became a flawed democracy. And every year since... the US rating has been worse.” (11:09)
• The Index looks at factors like voter turnout, role of the legislature, rule of law, and media freedom.

6. Underlying Causes—Long-Term Trends, Not Just Trump

• Lepore and Remnick agree that while Trump has shaped recent rhetoric and action, many undemocratic trends have older roots.
• Topics include:
  • Increasing presidential power (“goes pretty far back... certainly goes back to Nixon.”) (12:27)
  • Politicization of the Supreme Court
  • Rising income inequality (“increasing income inequality, which precedes Trump, and it’s just only been exacerbated.”) (13:15)
• These issues are seen as persistent, systemic challenges, not confined to recent years.

7. Modern Civic Engagement—Can We Recreate the ‘Town Hall’?

• Lepore wonders about modern equivalents to 1930s civic forums.
• Remnick is cautiously optimistic:
  “I think there’s a lot more of that going on than we might perceive. I don’t think you can really track it going on on social media ... but I think it actually goes on all the time in classrooms. I went to my city council meeting... and I was like, all right, democracy is still working.” (14:29)

8. Philosophy of Political Agency—Quoting Benedetto Croce

• Lepore refers to a 1937 New Republic survey of intellectuals about democracy’s decline.
• Remnick summarizes Croce’s answer:
  “Politics and government is not like the weather... You don’t just sit around ... you actually go out and change the weather.” (15:34)

9. Despair and Hope: Should We Be Pessimistic?

• They discuss a culture of political despair among American intellectuals.
• Remnick pushes back:
  “Before 1965, we didn’t even have voting rights in this country. What is the past that you think was so infinitely better than this moment? ... Conversations... are what actually restores the democracy.” (16:36)

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Memorable Quotes

• David Remnick (03:30):
  “The staggering needs of mass society seemed in many parts of the world to just be not addressable by majority rule, that there needed to be a strongman who could rescue starving populations from their suffering.”

• Orson Welles, as narrator (05:56):
  “Is it possible to conceive of self government today in those terms?... In that sense, democracy for the first time is really being tried. Democracy for the first time is really being tested.”

• David Remnick (09:33):
  “The very term fake news comes out of the 1930s because…it’s what Americans and the British, it’s what the Allies called Nazi radio broadcasts.”

• Jill Lepore (13:15):
  “Increasing income inequality, which precedes Trump, and it’s just only been exacerbated. But it’s not all on him.”

• David Remnick (15:34):
  “[Benedetto Croce’s view:] ...You don’t just sit around like trying to decide, do I need an umbrella today? You actually go out and change the weather.”

• David Remnick (16:36):
  “Before 1965, we didn’t even have voting rights in this country. What is the past that you think was so infinitely better than this moment?”

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 01:15 – Setting the historical context: 1930s America in crisis
• 05:04 – The rise of public forums: America’s Town Meeting of the Air
• 08:43 – Media and manipulation: War of the Worlds as media criticism
• 11:09 – Introduction of the Democracy Index and U.S. democratic decline
• 13:40 – Discussing the long arc of income inequality and institutional challenges
• 14:29 – Can modern technology and forums revive democratic deliberation?
• 15:34 – Benedetto Croce’s philosophy: Agency and responsibility in politics
• 16:36 – The dangers of political despair and why engagement matters

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Tone & Style

The conversation is analytical, historically grounded, and at times urgently civic-minded, but also conversational and accessible. Remnick and Lepore balance historical exposition with opinion, using stories and historical vignettes to make present-day political concerns feel both grounded and immediate.

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Conclusion

This episode resiliently underscores that doubts about democracy are not new, and that history offers both warnings and guides for renewal. By examining debates, media, and activism from the 1930s and connecting them to today’s challenges, Remnick and Lepore encourage listeners to actively engage, question despair, and recognize the continuing power of civic conversation in sustaining democracy.

Transcript

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[David Remnick]

I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, David Remnick talks with New Yorker staff writer and Harvard history professor Jill Lepore. They'll Discuss the early 1930s, when the American public began to doubt the future of liberal democracy. In the 1930s, you could count on the Yankees winning the World Series, dust storms plaguing the prairies, evangelicals preaching on the radio, Franklin Delano Roosevelt residing in the White House, people lining up for blocks for scraps of food, and democracies dying from the Andes to the Urals to the Alps.

[Jill Lepore]

Jill Lepore is a historian at Harvard University and a staff writer at the New Yorker. And she's cultivated a real specialty in setting today's political upheavals in the context of American history. Her essay in Every Dark Hour considers how our nation responded the last time it seemed that democracy was in serious trouble around the world.

[David Remnick]

American democracy too staggered, weakened by corruption, monopoly, apathy, inequality, political violence, hucksterism, racial injustice, unemployment, even starvation. We do not distrust the future of essential democracy, fdr said in his first inaugural address Telling Americans that the only thing they had to fear was, was fear itself. But there was more to be afraid of, including Americans own declining faith in self government. What does democracy mean? NBC radio asked listeners. Do we Negroes believe in democracy? W.E.B. du Bois asked the readers of his newspaper column. Could it happen here? Sinclair Lewis asked in 1935. Americans suffered and hungered and wondered.

[Jill Lepore]

Jill, in your essay you're describing a time when Americans and people all over the world were really questioning the future of democracy. What was going on that was making Americans so nervous, a familiar feeling, but so nervous about the democratic process.

[David Remnick]

It was witnessing new democracies fail. So at the end of the First World War, a whole lot of new democracies had been born when European empires had been broken up. And it was exciting and riveting and there was a sense of triumph, that early 20s sense of triumph that markets were soaring, people were getting wealthier, democracies were thriving, and it all seemed to fall apart. And by the time you get to the 1930s, the beginning of the Depression, of course it's much worse and much more perilous because the staggering needs of mass society seemed in many parts of the world to just be not addressable by majority rule, that there needed to be a strongman who could rescue starving populations from their suffering.

[Jill Lepore]

So this was a period of enormous uncertainty for democracy. And Americans themselves had a lot of questions about what democracy meant and how it should work. And the solution you, you suggest to some extent was to talk.

[David Remnick]

Yeah, I mean on the one hand a lot of Americans were swayed by communism and by fascism. I mean there's a huge range of political opinion and all kinds of new political activity in the United states in the 1930s, political experiments. But in many ways in response to the attractions of forms of political extremism, Americans who did believe in democracy really fought for it by trying to rekindle its spirit.

[Jill Lepore]

Well, I want to play a clip from something called America's Town meeting of the Year.

[Orson Welles]

What does democracy mean?

[David Remnick]

This is this completely goofy. I mean, I think I just want to warn listeners, this sounds really corny. So you either love this stuff or you don't love this stuff stuff. It was a national radio broadcast. It started in 1935 and it was enormously successful. So they would hold these debates in a lecture hall. They'd bring in like a thousand people, sometimes more, and they'd bring to the stage a few different people, a panel of maybe four or five people. It wasn't like a one on one debate. I mean they Called it a debate. It's more of a panel or a symposium. And they'd have these big questions. You know, should the United States have universal health insurance? And they bring in half. You know, half the people on the panel would agree and half would disagree.

[Orson Welles]

No more appropriate place could be found for a discussion of the subject. What does democracy mean than our own town hall in New York City, the home of America's town? In the early American town meetings, a majority of all citizens of a community used to meet together and determine where to build the new schoolhouse, how to run the new road, and what to do about Widow Jenkins of Strepper's Cow. Is it possible to conceive of self government today in those terms? What then does democracy mean under present conditions? In that sense, democracy for the first time is really being tried. Democracy for the first time is really being tested. Now for the questions we pick. The man in the balcony there, Mr. Hathaway, stated that the democracy he expects is the democracy that will permit this present capitalist class to bring in socialism peacefully. Don't you think that the working class, Mr. Hathaway, would do very well to drop any nonsense of any possibility of bettering its condition under this present system of society and listen to the message of the Socialist Labor Party, the only revolutionary organization in the United States?

[David Remnick]

What I'm struck by listening to it is like the sense that people had in the 1930s, that they were really on the precipice of history, that democracy was new. As that announcer said, historically, democracies had only begun with the United States in 1776. But what they really. What they really do accomplish, a lot of these conversations is really bringing in ordinary people. I mean, you just really do get the sense when you listen to them or when you read debates, accounts of debates that are going on in town libraries and in school buildings that are opened up at night for debates, political debates. That your kind of basic farmer is there, your union worker is there, the nurse from the hospital is there, the librarian is there. And people are really kind of dedicating themselves, kind of struggling with working their way through these really big questions. I mean, think about the suffering of the Depression. I mean, everyone was vulnerable to complete economic collapse. No matter where you stood, just. You could. You could fall really fast. And people saw one another falling really fast. And so what was going to hold people up? Well, you were going to have to hold each other up.

[Jill Lepore]

Jill, I understand you want to play another clip, which might be more familiar to our listeners.

[Orson Welles]

Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental radio news. At 20 minutes before 8 Central Time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving toward the Earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pearson of the observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell's observation and describes the phenomenon as, quote, like a jet of blue flame shot from a gun, unquote.

[Jill Lepore]

Well, I think some people at least will recognize that this is a clip from Orson Welles famous apocalyptic radio drama, the War of the Worlds. But I have got to say it's not the direction I thought we were heading in. How does this relate to discussions about democracy that were going on at that time?

[David Remnick]

Oh, it's totally just a pretext to listen to Orson Welles. No. So War of the Worlds was broadcast, of course, on HOL in 1938. And Wells has offered many explanations over his lifetime for why he did it. But the one I believe, and I choose to believe, is that Wells was actually genuinely concerned about the possibilities that radio could be used for nefarious purposes. That if you like, if you think about what the implications are of a technology of communications, radio is invasive. It's this voice in your kitchen coming out of your living room. It's incredibly intimate. And the very. The term fake news comes out of the 1930s because it's what Americans and the British, it's what the Allies called Nazi radio broadcasts. On shortwave radio, they broadcast these English language news reports. They were just a bunch of lies. They broadcast them all over north and South America. And there was a lot of stuff on the radio. There was Father Coughlin, there's a lot of nuttiness from Huey Long. There's a lot of stuff that you should be really suspicious of on the radio. And Wells was kind of interested in saying, here's actually another obligation of living in a democracy. You have to actually be careful where you're getting your information. You have to have a critical apparatus around it.

[Jill Lepore]

And that's a lesson we're still struggling with, it seems. Jill, one thing that surprises me, you wrote about the Democracy Index, which rates the nations of the world on just how democratic they are, right down to the bottom of the list where North Korea is. But the US isn't doing so great in recent years. Why not? What are the factors that go into a country's rating in the Democracy Index?

[David Remnick]

Yeah, it's this. I mean, you can, I guess, people try to measure anything but there was a kind of concern. This democracy index was started by a think tank, I think, associated with the Economist magazine as an expression of concern for the seeming fragility of democracies around the world. That would be something that would be worth paying attention to. So there's a whole series of measures that go into it having to do with voter turnout or having to do with do people show up, even kind of congressional turnout, legislative turnout, Are laws being passed? Are laws being vetoed? How is the press free? Is there censorship? And unsurprisingly, when the democracy index started, the United States was one of the stronger democracies rated as a full democracy. According to this index, the United States first fell out of that top tier category in 2016 and became a flawed democracy. And every year since 20, the US rating has been worse. So two things seem to be true from this evidence, right, that the number of democracies around the world has been dwindling. And then in the case of the United States, the United States has become significantly less Democratic.

[Jill Lepore]

So we chalk that off to Donald Trump. What are the factors that have made us dip?

[David Remnick]

I guess I just think that stuff that's been going on with the growing power of the presidency as against the other branches of government goes pretty far back. I mean, it certainly goes back to Nixon.

[Jill Lepore]

That'S for sure.

[David Remnick]

I can't see, see a Hillary Clinton White House having turned that around and ceded power back to Congress. For instance, the increasing politicization of the Supreme Court is something that, I mean, I would date to really Reagan's Justice Department and Reagan's appointments. I guess conservatives would look at that differently, but people would date that to the Warren Court, say those are things that are making our system of government not work as it was designed, and.

[Jill Lepore]

Increasing incoming inequality, which precedes Trump, and it's just only been exacerbated. But it's not all on him. I take your point completely. It just seems that since 2016, in rhetoric and in action, the individual has made a difference. I'm not saying he's the everything and the be all and there weren't factors before. And it will probably outlive him.

[David Remnick]

It will absolutely outlive him. But I mean, I don't know. I put a chart on the screen in a class that has income inequality polarization charted from 1945 to 2016. And we get where we get based on changes that start in 1968. So, yes, you can follow that chart from 2016 to 2020. And things, things look worse, but it's a long term. Those are long term trends.

[Jill Lepore]

Your piece fairly yearns for calls for the modern equivalent somehow of town halls, radio plays, public forums, the kind of thing we were discussing before. How would you see that taking place in the world that you know, of the university of social media, of the technologies that we have available? Is it even possible? What would it look like?

[David Remnick]

I'm sure that it actually does take place in all kinds of ways. I mean, I spend a fair amount of time going to K through 12 schools and meeting with kids and watching them debate stuff or argue over things. I think there's a lot more of that going on than we might perceive. I don't think you can really track it going on on social media because it's just not conducive. It's not conducive as a format to the kind of careful deliberative listening that you can imagine. But I think it actually goes on all the time in classrooms. I went to my city council, to a city council meeting this year and I was like, all right, democracy is still working, but you kind of have to get into a room with people.

[Jill Lepore]

So I want to go back to your piece. You write about a series that ran in 1937 in the New Republic where editors asked each writer, a series of writers, whether they thought political democracy was on the wane. And you described the answer given by the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce. And Italy at that point was living under fascism. So what did Croce say?

[David Remnick]

He objected to the question the way a good philosopher should, and he just objected to the passive framing of the question because he's like, his thing was, all right, politics and government is not like the weather. We don't just like, you're asking me basically a meteorological question, like, what's the weather look like? It's not the weather. This is actually, we control politics and government. So you don't ask people, what's the weather going to be like. You ask people go out, how are you going to go out and change the weather? What are you going to do? You don't just sit around like trying to decide, do I need an umbrella today? You actually go out and change the weather. And that's what I think people had a sense of needing to urgently do in the 1930s. And we do have a kind of different sensibility. I don't know.

[Asma Khalid]

We. Whatever.

[David Remnick]

In the quarters that I inhabit, there's a lot of political despair. It's a fashionable political despair. It's almost like a fetish for political despair.

[Jill Lepore]

Is it a reasonable political despair?

[David Remnick]

Seriously? No, I don't actually think it is.

[Jill Lepore]

Why so?

[David Remnick]

I really don't. Because, look, before 1965, we didn't even have voting rights in this country. What is the past that you think was so infinitely better than this moment? It's easy to take democracy for granted when things are going fairly well. And when you watch democratic institutions being jeopardized and when you watch abuses of power and authority, it casts your attention and your concern into really stark light. And those conversations that you have about what's going on are what actually restores the democracy. They are what rekindles those traditions, what defends those institutions, and what renews the democracy itself.

[Jill Lepore]

Jill Lepore, thanks so much.

[David Remnick]

Thanks, David.

[Jill Lepore]

Jill Lepore is a staff writer. Now, throughout this election year, we're going to be considering the future of democracy from a range of perspectives. And we've inaugurated a series appropriately called the Future of Democracy. And we'll send you all the pieces in the series. If you text the word democracy to the number 70101. Don't worry, I tried it and it works. Text the word democracy to 70101.

[David Remnick]

America is changing, and so is the world.

[Jill Lepore]

But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

[Asma Khalid]

I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. hi.

[Jill Lepore]

I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is THE Global story.

[Asma Khalid]

Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.

[Jill Lepore]

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Orson Welles]

From.

[David Remnick]

PRX.