♪ ♪ (theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: Hello, I'm David Rubenstein, and I'm pleased to be in conversation today with Richard Haass, an esteemed policy maker and diplomat, and for 20 years, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

We're gonna talk about his new book, a New York Times bestseller, The Bill of Obligations, Th e Ten Habits of Good Citizens.

So, Richard, let's talk about the title.

Um, obviously, everybody's familiar with the Bill of Rights, which is attached to the Constitution.

The Bill of Obligations, obviously, plays off of that.

So it is an obligation that people have, in your view, to do certain things, or it'd be a nice thing if they did these things?

HAASS: What makes an obligation an obligation is it's not a requirement, legally.

These are not things you have to do.

This is a book about, what I believe, things people should do.

It's good for themselves.

It's good for the society.

And if things are good for the society, for one another, for the country, in return I think it will redound to their benefit.

But yes, this is a book, uh, about obligations.

And the, the, the thinking is, you know, we spend so much of our time thinking about rights, and talking about rights, what we're owed, and rights are fundamental to democracy.

You know that.

Everybody here knows that.

And my view is that rights are, how to put it, necessary but not sufficient for democracy to, to, to function.

And inevitably they'll come into conflict with one another.

Uh, inevitably if, um, someone get, if he or she gets all they want on a certain right, where does that leave those who, who disagree?

So my view is that obligations have gotten short, have gotten short shrift.

And again, don't get me wrong, it's not that the rights situation in America is perfect.

I think Lincoln's comment, uh, about our unfinished work.

That still holds.

But even if we ever were to finish the work on rights, if we could somehow come on to a consensus, that's still not enough to make American democracy work.

RUBENSTEIN: All right, before we go through these obligations, I'd like to go through the history... HAASS: Sure.

RUBENSTEIN: That, uh, took you up to this point.

So, uh, when this country fought the Revolutionary War, we were governed by an Articles of Confederation, more or less.

HAASS: More less than more.

RUBENSTEIN: Right, and the problem with the Articles of Confederation was it was... What, what was wrong with it?

HAASS: Well, the Articles of Confederation essentially had no executive, and the states were sovereign entities.

So the Article of Confederation was a bonding together, very, very loose, of sovereign entities called states.

And there had to be unanimity among them for anything to get done.

And what... As you often see in life, the one thing everybody agreed on is what they opposed, which was Great Britain.

Hence the, the Revolution.

After that, consensus essentially broke down.

And the Articles of Confederation were a truly inadequate basis for governing.

And if you go back, and actually, I, I recommend that people read it.

It is, it is jaw-dropping that anybody thought it actually could be a blueprint for governing.

And my hunch is that they were simply as much as could be agreed upon.

People were so wary of concentrated power.

The entire birth of the United States was a rejection of concentrated power of Great Britain.

So when we formed our own government the opposition to that, the rejection of concentrated power, informed almost everything that was done.

The Articles were the result, but it's as if people weren't thinking about, is this a viable mechanism for governing?

Only months and years afterwards did they realize what they had created was totally inadequate.

Indeed, you know, one of the expressions we use in my business now all the time is "failed state".

Well, guess what?

The United States was essentially on the brink of being a failed state.

RUBENSTEIN: So, we started the Revolutionary War in 1776.

Uh, the Battle of Yorktown was 1781.

Finally in 1783, uh, we get the Treaty of Paris, which ends the war.

Uh, the Articles of Confederation are still governing the country, but the problem, as you allude to, is that everything had to be unanimous.

Nothing could be done unless it was all the states agreed, and they didn't agree on a lot of things.

So, uh, at some point somebody decided, let's have a revision of the Articles of Confederation.

Who was the driving force for that?

HAASS: Wait, I just wanna highlight something you said.

What we call the Constitutional Convention, no one at the time called it the Constitutional Convention.

It was kind of a subterfuge.

The whole idea was to meet in Philadelphia to improve, to revise, the Articles of Confederation.

I think, all along, Madison in particular, uh, Hamilton in particular, had this more ambitious idea.

Essentially they were federalists.

They wanted to create a stronger government, and they knew that you couldn't get from here to there building on the Articles.

They knew that you had to essentially j, jettison them and start over.

They couldn't say that, because that would've been too much for people to swallow.

So they got people there, it sounds a bit rough, but I think it's true, on a pretext, and very quickly the, the purpose of the, what we know call the Constitutional Convention became just that, to draft, if you will, Constitution 2.0, 'cause Constitution 1.0, the Articles, were so inadequate.

RUBENSTEIN: So George Washington came, and that gave a lot of credibility to it.

He presided over it.

And it lasted for four months.

They finally agree on the document and so forth.

And, uh, at the last minute somebody says, "How about a Bill of Rights?

We don't have any Bill of Rights."

What happened?

HAASS: Two things I'd say.

One is, ultimately several states conditioned their ratification on the adoption of the Bill of Rights.

And what that reflected was a larger conversation.

And you think about the, people like Patrick Henry.

Well, Patrick Henry was one of the leaders of the anti-federalist movement.

And his whole argument, in the context making quite a lot of sense, was, "Hold it.

Didn't we just fight a Revolutionary War against concentrated power?

Why in the world would we now wanna do this to ourselves?"

So you had a very powerful, uh, a, Anti-federalist movement, that thought that this was an overcorrection to the flaws in the Articles.

And the Bill of Rights was essentially the political price, or some would say benefit.

But the political mechanism that proved to be essential in order to get the s, enough states to sign onto this new constitution.

Again, remember, in the Articles states were sovereign.

So a lot of the Bill of Rights, some were individual rights, but in many cases it was to reassure states.

And again, you can't have this conversation without what was hovering in the background, which was slavery.

And the whole idea was not to have, uh, a government that could tell the states what to do about, uh, slavery, much less to tell some of the new territories that would, that would come in.

So this was the, the- the compromise, and the Constitution itself is all about compromises.

But this is in some ways the first of the, of the, of the essential compromises.

RUBENSTEIN: So the irony is that we said in this country, the, the colonial leaders, "We, we don't wanna be," um, "subject to the rule of the king."

Uh, "We wanna be free people."

Yet they allowed the slaves to be kept.

And, and if there had been no slavery allowed in this country, the Constitution never would've been ratified, I presume.

HAASS: That was one of the essential compromises.

Uh, and again, it was the backdrop to all else, and essentially we finessed that tension in the country for... What?

75, 85 years.

And ultimately the Civil War was the end of the ability of this still young country to finesse the differences on this issue.

RUBENSTEIN: So there were 13 colonies, and there, under the way they had drafted it, nine of the 13 had to agree.

Um, so when the ninth one agreed, the, the others were more or less supposed to be part of the union.

And, um, James Madison, who had fought against the Bill of Rights at the Constitutional Convention, later became the principal proponent of it when he was a member of the House of Representatives.

How did we get the Bill of Rights ultimately?

HAASS: Well, again, it was several states said that their support was, was conditioned, uh, upon it.

A lot of these guys, lots of states that had their own equivalent of what we now call the, the Bill, Bill of Rights, uh, federally.

There was a little bit of, uh, horse trading, shall we say.

Originally there were 12.

It's almost like the uh, Mel Brooks movies, or whatever, Moses comes down from the mountain and drops one of the tablets.

Hence we have 10 commandments, not 15.

Well, a little bit of that on the um, the Bill of Rights.

12 got boiled down to, uh, 10.

Some of the people like Madison were critical of it.

And people like Madison and others said, "Well, hold it.

If you say this is the Bill of Rights, what about the things you don't enumerate?"

and so forth, so there was a real concern that the specifi, specificity that was inherent to the Bill of Rights might have unintended consequences.

Again though, at the end of the day the intellectual concerns I think were simply overcome by the political realities.

RUBENSTEIN: So the process has started in the first Congress.

Madison drafts up an enormous number of, of potential Bill of Rights, but ultimately the Congress agrees to 12 of them, and sends 12 to the states, and 10 are ratified.

Uh, those are really the core of what often is constitutional litigation's about.

It's really about what those rights are, right?

HAASS: Yeah, there's a, there's a quote in the book, uh, from former Justice Breyer, Stephen Breyer, where he said, "Most of what we do in the Supreme Court is not debate rights versus wrongs.

It's rights versus rights."

And that's the essence in many ways.

And you think about it.

Think about so many of our contemporary debates, the right of a, a woman, a mother, uh, to choose, as opposed to rights of the unborn.

My rights under the second amendment to bear arms, your rights to, to physical safety.

So rights versus rights are essential to the democratic way.

The problem is, what do you do when you can't resolve them?

What, what do you do then?

And that's, again, what drove me in the direction towards obligations.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, the Constitution gave us what's called a republican form of government.

Uh, it was novel at the time, the idea that you create out of whole cloth a democratic or republican form of government was just never been done before really.

So what did Benjamin Franklin say when somebody asked him what you're gonna give the American people?

HAASS: Yeah, the story, it's hard to know if it's apocryphal or not, but it's so good, I, I don't care... uh, that when he was leaving the, uh, Philadelphia Convention, as it was known at the time, someone, a woman came up and said, uh, "Mr. Franklin," uh, "what did, what did you, what did you all agree on?"

And his answer was, "A republic."

And then he paused and said, "If you can keep it."

And I think that's one of the great quotes.

And, um, you know, we've kept it for close to two and a half centuries.

But if you...

It's interesting.

Uh, I hadn't known, not just Franklin, but you read Adams, and some of the others, how s... these were, these were men who were basically fundamentally conservative in the old sense of the word, skeptical of human nature.

And they all have fairly dark views about our ability to keep this.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, Jefferson thought it should only last 20 years, more or less.

But, the interesting thing about the Constitutional Convention, among many other things, is that it was a, a limited number of people who made the Constitution.

In other words, to be in the Constitutional Convention you had to be white, male, property owner and Christian.

There were no Jews, no women, no African Americans in the Constitutional Convention.

Yet we still live with that Constitution.

Isn't that kind of surprising that that group of people came up with something that we're still living with, with 27 amendments?

HAASS: It's not surprising, it's amazing, uh, that this system has lasted as long as it has, it's done as well as it has.

And I think it's, it's adapted in many, uh, in many years.

But you know, as, as we all get slightly more sclerotic as we, as we reach a certain age, the question is whether that's also what happens to democracy and to political systems.

And I think there's an argument that we're, we're, we're less adaptive than we were, and, and it's, it's obvious why.

Any conceivable reform anyone can think of, inevitably there are those who feel this would serve their purposes, and those who feel they'd be disadvantaged of it.

It's good you're sitting down, 'cause shockingly enough, those who believe the reforms would help others more than themselves tend to oppose them.

And that is where we are.

It's very hard now, increasingly, for our democracy to adjust or adapt on the big issues.

RUBENSTEIN: So they're 10 of the Bill of Rights, and you have 10 obligations.

So we'll go through each of them.

First one is "be informed."

What does that mean?

HAASS: Well, Jefferson, more than anyone else talked about the importance of, uh, informed citizens.

More recently, Ronald Reagan said, "Yes, I, I admire patriots, but it's essential that we have informed patriotism in this country."

And I believe to, to be informed means to understand the back, some of the basic history of this country, some of the basic workings of our government, to be up on some of the issues, the basic choices facing, um, facing the country.

Turns out to be tougher than it is, than you think.

Here we are in an age where there's more information available more quickly than ever before in human history, yet it's actually more difficult, in some ways, as a result, to be informed.

If you choose this or that media outlet, you, it may be something that doesn't give you facts.

So I believe that we need to become information literate, learn how to discern, how to navigate this world of, uh, of lots of information.

But I think to me it means understanding, uh, some of the basic DNA of this country, something about how the government's meant to operate, and something about the, the issues, the, the considerations.

It takes you then to the second obligation, which is to "be involved."

Well, we want people to be involved, but we want people to be involved in an informed way.

So to me, the reason I made "be informed" as the first of the obligations is I actually think it's the important.

Democracy... And David mentioned, uh, Franklin's line about the republic.

So in this country we don't have direct democracy for the most part.

Referenda is, uh, relatively rare.

We vote for people who then we entrust to make certain decisions.

But how else can we keep them accountable if we are not, uh, to be informed.

So to me in some ways it is, uh, here I agree with Jefferson, who unfortunately couldn't be with us tonight, but that, uh, that this is the mo, this is the most basic of, uh, of the obligations of a citizen.

RUBENSTEIN: So your third one is, "stay open to compromise."

So what do you mean?

HAASS: Well, just that.

Uh, if we're gonna get things done in this society, it's gonna more often than not require, uh, compromise.

I also think there's another reason to compromise.

If battles over rights become all or nothing, just think about it, the side that gets nothing, what stake will they have in the outcome?

The answer is none.

I believe the side that ends up with nothing in an all-or-nothing decision is much more prone either to be totally alienated, or worse yet, potentially pick, take up arms.

They would say, "Hold it, this is not a system that represents my interests."

So I believe compromise is necessary for getting things done, but also to, to get buy in into our, into our political system.

RUBENSTEIN: Your fourth obligation is, um, to "remain civil."

So obviously, the events of January 6th didn't seem that way.

Um, are you worried about more non-civil kinds of, uh, outbursts like that?

HAASS: The short answer is yes.

There's a coarseness at times to Amer, to American tel, politics that worries me.

But there's a practical reason as well.

Think about it.

It's a Thursday, you're, you're disagreeing with somebody, whether you're in Congress or it's your neighbor.

Well, Friday may come along, and suddenly you wanna work with that person on some other issue.

If civility breaks down your chances of finding common cause and ability to work with them on some other issue, or actually you might agree, your ability to do that is, is, is much diminished.

So I think, again, civility is necessary as a, as a path to compromise on the issue at hand, but it's a way of maintaining relationships, so then you have the chance to work together on something else.

RUBENSTEIN: Related to that is your fifth one, is "reject violence."

So violence is, uh, fairly American.

We've seen violence throughout our country's history, unfortunately.

Do you think there's any diminution of a commitment to violence?

Are, are people now more worried about it after January 6th?

Or are people saying, "Well, that's the American way"?

HAASS: Well, historically it is the American way on, on a large scale once, which was the Civil War, and the cost of that are, it's incalc, uh, incalculable.

The idea that violence would become commonplace, that would end American life as we know it, physical safety, the ability to conduct business, the ability to go to school.

There cannot be any space for politically-inspired violence.

That's the definition of terrorism, non-state actors using force for political ends.

If that becomes commonplace here, that is the end, not just of American democracy, but American life as, uh, we know it.

Now, I understand there's times for things like civil disobedience, where you, you're, you're prepared to go against a law that you believe is unjust or what have you, but it's important to remember, those are reformist acts.

Uh, if one goes back and looks at Thoreau, at Civil Disobedience, the Civil Rights movement, yes, you break the law at times, but one, it's non-violent, and you still accept the legitimacy of the state.

Pay the fine.

Go to prison.

It's not a revolutionary act.

The use of violence is a revolutionary act.

Democracy cannot survive if revolutionary acts become commonplace.

RUBENSTEIN: So your sixth obligation is "value norms."

What do you mean by value norms?

HAASS: Norms are a form of obligation.

They're things that you should do.

They're traditions.

They're certain types of, uh, practices.

The most famous one in America is that when you lose an election, you call up the other person and you say, "Congratulations."

You concede.

You tell your, your supporters, "We fought the good fight," and then you, you, you agree to work for the good of the country.

I mean, to me the classic norm is that ride up Pennsylvania Avenue.

And we, we lost that several years ago, and I believe that's a, that's a major loss and cost.

And there's other norms in a, in a political tradition in, in our own personal life.

But these are behaviors that we wanna encourage.

For example, you know, certain understandings about making taxes, um, transparent.

Again, you know, it may not be a matter of law, but it's a matter of tradition.

We want those who are entrusted with special power and authority, we want the average person to understand that they're, they're acting in the national interest rather than the personal interest.

The norm that individual members of Congress ought not to be trading stocks, particularly if they have access to certain information.

That norm isn't strong enough, hence you may need legislation to enforce it.

But we can't imagine in the law everything we either want to encourage or discourage.

Y, you can't be sufficiently detailed.

New things always arise.

And that's where things like norms are really important.

They're, they're, they're complementary or supplementary to the law.

RUBENSTEIN: Seventh is "promote the common good."

What do you mean by that?

HAASS: It's, uh, it's bas, it's very consistent with religion, with modern scripture.

It's the idea that we live in this society.

We owe something to our brother or sister.

We are our brother's or sister's keeper, to some extent.

But we do it not just out of concern for them.

There actually turns out to be a good deal of self-interest.

I think there's a sense of what we should do in a, almost in moral quasi-religious sense.

It's, it's the right thing, what social scientists call normative, again.

But I also think there's a practical dimension, the fact that looking out for our fellow citizen, it, it also is good for us, 'cause we benefit from the quality of the society, this economy as a whole.

RUBENSTEIN: So your eighth, uh, obligation is "respect government service."

Do you think there should be an obligation by all citizens to go into government service or not?

HAASS: I do, an obligation, not a requirement.

I'm not arguing for a draft.

But I think national service in this country oughta be, uh, incentivized much more than it is.

Uh, I think it's a great, uh, way to overcome some of these divisions in our country.

One of the...

When you think about, you know, World War II when we did have the draft, and the greatest generation, it brought people together who would otherwise had never come to know each other, again, from different geographies, educational backgrounds, classes, races, religions, what, what have you.

But we now have an America which i, is getting so much more separateness, so much less common experience.

So I would like to, uh, overcome that.

RUBENSTEIN: Your ninth one is, uh, "support the teaching of civics."

But, essentially you can graduate from almost any college in the United States without having to take a civics course.

But what about, uh, to get your driver's license you have to pass a civics test or something like that?

That realistic?

HAASS: Uh, probably not.

Uh, that kinda mandatory stuff, I don't, I, uh, I don't think would work.

But what I'm hoping is that schools basically say, "This is what we think a," uh, "educated person needs to know."

I mean, you wouldn't have somebody graduate from high school or, or college without basic reading skills, critical thinking skills, some understanding of, you know, computers.

Why would we wanna put people out in a society without a basic understanding of what this democracy is, and what is, what does it, uh, need from its citizens in order work?

We have such a stake in that.

So I would, I would hope this would become part and parcel of, um, of an education.

I love the idea.

A lot of universities have what's known as first-year experience, and young people come on campuses.

I love the idea that this would be a first-year experience, that they would study civics.

They would read some of the texts, and then they could sit down and have a conversation like this one about the difference between at times American principles and, American realities, or where, where do we wanna change things, or what was meant, what did the Federalist Papers mean about this, or what about this Supreme Court decision.

I think both the, the content of it would be really valuable, but I think the conversations that would flow from it would be really valuable.

RUBENSTEIN: So earlier in your career you were a Rhodes' scholar.

You studied in England for a number of years.

So I always have the impression that people in England understand government and civics better than we do here.

Is that false?

Or do you have a sense from living there that people there understand how their government works better than we understand how our government works?

HAASS: Worse than that, many of them understand not just how their government works better, but ours.

When I used to teach at the Kennedy School I was surprised by how many of the students from overseas had studied American government more than Americans.

The other ironic thing, given the debate in this country about immigration, who are often the people most up to speed about American civics?

It's immigrants.

Why?

They have to take it in order to pass their citizenship test.

You know, there are a lot of, you know, polls and the rest that suggest that a lot of Americans would have trouble passing these things.

So again, I think we've got a, what I would call a civics deficit in this country.

RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, 91% of those who take this test, foreign citizens who wanna be U.S. citizens, pass.

You have...

There's 100 potential questions you're, you're, you're potentially be asked about, and you get 10 that you're asked, and you have to get six right.

If you're over the age of 65, they tell you exactly which 10 they're gonna ask you.

HAASS: So we would stand a better chance of passing, David.

RUBENSTEIN: But on the same, an equivalent test was given to all, uh, to native-born citizens in all 50 states a few years ago, and several million took it, and only one state, Vermont, did a majority of citizens, native-born, passed the basic citizenship test, which goes to your point that people don't know this stuff very much.

So your last point is "put the country first."

What do you mean by that?

HAASS: Just that.

Almost in the spirit of John F. Kennedy's inaugural, "Ask not, uh, what your country can do for you."

That's the rights debate.

"But ask what you can do for your country."

Put your country first.

Put your country before personal ambition.

Put your country before your party.

I, I, uh, I didn't, originally, uh, I didn't have this.

I thought it was implicit in the other nine, and in some ways it's a catchall, but after more I thought about it, I thought it was important to state this as an explicit obligation.

'Cause it's, it's a, it's a mentality.

It's a framing.

And I'll talk a personal thing.

Uh, recent, when I, when I voted and, you know, here's this book, and I've talked about the importance of putting democracy first, and, and putting country first, and I had to make a choice between two candidates.

And one was a candidate with whom I largely agreed on the issues, but this person was a, an election denier going back to the 2020 presidential election, and the other candidate I disagreed with on probably 80% of the policy issues, but was, uh, not an election denier.

And I had to decide which way to vote.

And it was not the easiest moment for me to, to decide.

But at the end of the day I said, "We've gotta preserve the democracy in this country."

That at least holds open the opportunity that we can get the policies right down the road.

If we lose the democracy, then we lose the chance to correct the policies.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, we didn't get specifically in it, but in terms of the obligation to vote, um, in a presidential election, maybe if you're lucky, 60% of the eligible people will vote.

In a non-presidential election you might get 50%, if you're lucky, in a midterm.

In a municipal election, or a city council election, you might get 20%.

HAASS: Yeah.

RUBENSTEIN: So why do you think, uh, Americans vote, uh, in such a small percentage relative to other countries?

HAASS: Let's put aside the countries like Australia, that essentially require it, you pay a fine if you don't show up at the polling.

That would not work well here.

Uh, the uh, there's lots of reasons people give.

To some extent, there's one bucket of reasons that has to do with it can be very difficult.

And we, we have Election Day, a day.

Sometimes people have, you know, they work.

Their employers don't let them off.

Can't get childcare.

There aren't enough polling stations in certain neighborhoods.

The other reason is people aren't motivated.

Some of them say, "Well, one vote doesn't make a difference," or, "I don't see the difference between the candidates, I don't have the time to get up to speed, so I don't know which way I wanna..." I think there could be a potential compromise where we make it less difficult to vote, but we also take steps to guarantee the integrity of the, of the voting system.

So I think that's one potential area.

And the other is we need to think about, how do we motivate people to wanna vote?

And that's where I believe civics and the rest might, might make a difference.

RUBENSTEIN: I wanna thank you for a very interesting conversation and a great book, and hoping that this dialog continues for quite some time.

HAASS: Thank you, David.

RUBENSTEIN: Thank you.

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