- Political divisions are as old as the republic itself, but today's guest says that if we're serious about preserving the Union, there is much we can learn from the founders' study of the ancient republics in Rome and Greece.

He's Tom Ricks this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square," where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

And joining me as he does every week is my great friend and cohost G. Wayne Miller of The Providence Journal.

Each week, we talk about big issues with great guests, authors, journalists, artists, and more to make sense of the big stories shaping public life in the United States today.

This week, we're joined by Thomas E. Ricks, a revered defense reporter formerly with the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, he's turned his considerable talents now to "First Principles," and that's the title of his new book about America's founders.

Tom, thank you so much for being with us.

- [Tom] You're welcome, it's a pleasure.

- So I mentioned you've been a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with the Washington Post and with the Wall Street Journal.

Your previous book, "Fiasco," about the invasion of Iraq, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

What made you turn your considerable talents to the founders?

- You know, with a lot of books, you don't quite know where it came from.

With this one I can tell you precisely.

It was the Wednesday after the presidential election of 2016.

I woke up and I did not understand what had happened, how it had happened, why it had happened.

What did people think, what did Americans think by electing Donald Trump to be president?

And I had been taught in college that when you have a fundamental problem, go back to first principles.

So I actually walked downstairs and took off the shelf my old college copy of Aristotle's "Politics."

And I reread it in the context of the election of Donald Trump.

So for example, one thing that leapt out at me was Aristotle says at one point that oligarchies are the least stable form of government.

And to me that illuminated Donald Trump.

Oligarchy, rule by the rich, was what we were in for, and it would not be stable.

And I think that got me in a whole train of reading for the next couple of years of ancient Greek and Roman history, philosophy, literature.

And that led me to the revolutionary generation of Americans, who took their entire political vocabulary from Roman history, specifically from the decline of the Roman Republic.

- So what was it about that era, the classical era in history, that so attracted the interest of the founders?

- Well, consider the situation for them in the 1770s.

They want to start a new type of government.

They don't want a monarchy, with the exception of Alexander Hamilton, who was kind of out there.

There's not a lot of examples for them to look at.

There aren't a lot of nations that have been led without monarchs, kings, queens, emperors.

What they have is a few Greek city-states and the Roman Republic.

And they consider the Greeks to be a little bit flighty, irresponsible.

So they focus much more on Rome.

Even Hamilton said he thought the Roman Republic was the greatest political entity that had ever existed.

And so they take their role models of how they should behave from the Romans.

George Washington, for example, wants to be like Cato, the great statesman.

Kind of frugal wise, prudent, reserved, rigorous.

And Washington brings those characteristics not only to generalship, but also to the presidency.

And a lot of what we think of as the norms of the president, that kind of reserve and being above politics, are very much the characteristics of Cato.

Contrarily, John Adams wants to be like Cicero, the great Roman orator, also quite vain, as John Adams was.

Jefferson being Jefferson, a little bit different than the others, looks more to the Greeks, especially to Epicurus, the Greek philosopher who said that the aim of life should be to pursue happiness and to avoid pain, which goes a lot to explaining, among other things, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, but also Jefferson's lifelong pursuit of married women.

(Jim laughs) He could have romance with that, entanglements that would last and would come back to haunt him.

And so, again and again, he's pitching woo to married women.

- So Washington is heralded for his virtue, but of America's first four presidents, he is the least well-educated, at least in a formal sense.

Explain that to us.

- I actually think one of my favorite scenes of the book is one night Philadelphia, Vice President John Adams, vice president under Washington, is having some drinks with Timothy Pickering, who later would be postmaster general and then later secretary of state.

And they have a pitched argument about whether Washington is actually illiterate.

And Pickering says, "Oh yeah, he is."

And Adams says, "No, he's not.

I got good letters from him when I was in Congress and he was fighting the Revolution."

And Pickering poo-poos that.

He said, "Oh, those were written by Alexander Hamilton.

He knows how to write."

But Washington, for his lack of formal education, is like a lot of intelligent people who are not schooled.

He becomes very good at learning from experience.

He reflects on his experiences.

He's a man of deeds, not words.

He's never really an articulate man, but he's conscious of this lack and he brings around him people who can help him with that.

He also absorbs classical culture from the elites around him.

His favorite play is "Cato," a very popular play in the 18th century about that Roman statesman.

And he absorbs classical values through this discussions, through these political discussions in which the Roman models and the Roman quotations are constantly invoked.

- So what value did he place on virtue with the people close to him, and how did that work out in real time and in action in his relations with people post-revolution, as a president?

- Their reading of Roman history is that the Roman Republic was brought down by two things: by partisanship and corruption, financial and moral corruption.

So they want to avoid that, and they think the way to avoid that is through the pursuit of public virtue.

It's a word that means something very different to them than it does to us.

It basically meant public-mindedness, self sacrificing, putting the public interest before one's own interest even at great financial damage.

And so Washington emulates that model, but finds going through the Revolution that it's good to have, but it's insufficient.

And Madison, much younger, is thinking a lot of the same things.

And in the 1780s, they get together, Madison and Washington and some other people, and say, "This system of trying to rely on public virtue, on people being self sacrificing, is not working for us."

And that's why they go to the Constitution and design a very different system that says, "Look, virtue is nice, not sufficient.

Let's try to pit ambition against ambition, vice against vice."

And the way you do this is to disperse power across the land between the states and the federal government, through three branches of the federal government, through two houses within the legislative branch.

So you disperse power so greatly that the only way to make progress in society is to reach out, to form alliances, to be able to compromise, to be able to make deals.

And if you can't do that, they say you're going to freeze.

You're not gonna make any progress.

So Madison, the prime architect of the Constitution, would say that gridlock today is not a bug.

It's a feature.

It's the way they designed it.

If you can't get your act together, you're not going anywhere.

- Is there a direct corollary or a direct analog from the ancient world to the US Constitution?

- There isn't really.

The Constitution tries to be the best of what they've read from the ancient world, and especially as interpreted by Montesquieu, the great French philosopher of the Enlightenment who basically in his writings designs the modern liberal state based on tolerance, trying to balance justice with equality, trying to have freedom of association, the belief that personal, individual conscience should be respected.

That's Montesquieu's takeaway from the ancient world.

Montesquieu has a couple of warnings for them.

He comes away believing number one, that republics must be small, which is a problem for a growing country like the United States.

And second, that republics are difficult to sustain.

So the two problems they're really trying to address to draft in the Constitution is how do you have a big republic last a long time?

Kind of a question we face today as we look at the Constitution under a bit of a siege the past couple of weeks.

- So let's talk about today.

We are taping this one week after the riot in the Capitol and on a day when the House is poised to impeach the president for the second time.

If we had a time travel machine and could bring Washington and some of the other early presidents here today, let's start with Washington.

What would they think, say, react?

- I think the first thing they'd say is they'd be very pleased that the Constitution has lasted this long, that it has proved to be a resilient mechanism over a couple of hundred years.

I think the second thing is, if you told them the situation, they'd be a little bit shocked that we're still facing issues of white supremacy and white privilege, that the things they wrote into the Constitution about slavery lit a fuse for the civil war, that we have still not resolved those questions of race.

I think the third thing they'd say is, "You people are drifting towards oligarchy.

You've let money corrupt your politics."

They'd find that fundamentally corrupt.

Looking specifically at the riot in the Capitol that was meant to stymie the process of the Constitution and the peaceful transfer of power and did.

I mean, it's now not a peaceful transfer of power anymore.

For the first time in American history, we have a presidential transition that has turned violent.

So I think they'd be bothered by that.

They would say, "We wrote the Constitution in part in reaction to Shay's rebellion in Western Massachusetts a couple of years before the Constitution."

That's the reason there's a phrase in the Constitution about ensuring domestic tranquility.

And they would say, "The people who are running your government were asleep at the wheel."

I don't think they ever have really considered though, they knew that bad people would get into office, but I don't think they were wrestled with the issue of what if you have a present who's insurrectionist, a president who tries to stymie a transition?

They believed so much in virtues that I don't think they'd believe that to be possible.

On the other hand, they'd say, "Look, we designed a mechanism in there to impeach a president."

So I think they'd actually be rather pleased to see how quick and effective the reaction has been.

I think by the end of the day, Donald Trump will become the first person in American history to be impeached twice.

- And by the time this broadcasts, we'll know that for the fact.

But Tom, you have been one of the most important reporters on the American military in the last 25, 30 years.

You've received great awards for that reporting.

I'm curious your sense of the presence of, I guess, insurrectionist forces within the military, within the national security apparatus more generally.

Do you have a sense of how pervasive that threat is?

- I don't.

I would say simply that the American military does tend to reflect American society.

There are right wing extremists in our society.

There are some in the US military.

I think the US military could do a better job of policing its ranks, but I think they will going forward.

I think they were not quite alert to the issue of right wing extremism as they should have been.

And this is partly because of the normalization of it by the president.

I remember though, in Baghdad, Iraq, when you went to the Green Zone about 20 years ago during the American occupation early in Iraq, every single television in the military headquarters had one station on: Fox News.

And that's bad.

And it was bad for the execution of the mission.

And I think they were not sufficiently conscious of that.

Going forward, I think that will be.

I think, for example, also General Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, was rather naive last summer when he allowed himself to be pulled into president Trump walking across Lafayette Square and being present at a brutal attack on peaceful demonstrators exercising their first amendment rights.

Now, we are seeing... Part of the result of that is the right wing, these people who invaded the Capitol building, believed that they would be treated differently, and they were treated differently.

Imagine if that mob had been black.

I think that the reaction in this country would have been very different.

You're seeing a lot of people kind of surprised to find themselves being arrested for what they did.

They're just doing what the president told them to do.

It is a kind of shocking and stunning situation.

At the same time, it would be familiar to these people.

Not always in good ways.

John Adams as president in the 1790s thought it was illegal to criticize him, that presidents should not be criticized.

And he threw into jail dozens of newspaper editors simply for criticizing the president.

To his credit, Thomas Jefferson comes in in a peaceful transition of power from Adams and he says two things in his inauguration.

Number one, he says, "Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle," that is people can disagree with you and not be bad people.

And the second thing he says is, "I'm not gonna throw the opposition into jail."

However, John Adams, he does have a peaceful transition, but John Adams declines to attend the inauguration of President Jefferson, the first transfer of power to the opposition in our history.

Instead John Adams hops the 4:00 AM coach to Baltimore and gets out of town.

- So how could Adams...

It seems inconceivable to me that he would imprison journalists for criticizing him.

Certainly I'm saying this through the lens of... - A little biased, Wayne.

(everyone laughs) - Yeah, and a little bit of bias too.

I'm glad I'm in 2021 and not back then.

But seriously, how could he possibly have done that?

I'm not a historian of Adams, but you are.

- Remember that John Adams is very influenced by Cicero, the Roman statesman.

Cicero was living in a revolutionary time and he's trying to contain it.

And he's all about stability.

And so too John Adams believes that faction, that partisanship is almost treason.

And people who are pushing political parties, and political newspapers are emerging as a force in the 1790s.

Much like social media today, very disruptive.

And Adam says, "This is bad.

I'm gonna put an end to this.

I'm gonna put these editors in jail because they are treasonous."

It was a definitional problem.

They didn't have the vocabulary to talk about what was happening.

They didn't really see.

The political parties were emerging.

Madison did, and Madison and Jefferson are pushing political parties.

Adams believes to his bones that political parties are a form of treason because it's allegiance to a party rather than to country.

And sometimes that can be.

Right now you're seeing it again in this country where people have been putting the interest of their presidential ambitions or the Republican Party above the interest of the country.

I'm talking about people like Ted Cruz and Senator Holly from Missouri.

These people were willing to see a violent attack on the Capitol building because it advanced their interest of trying to stop the election results from being counted.

- Tom, so I enjoyed this book on a lot of different levels, but I want to talk to you about Epicureanism.

I can remember being a school boy and asking my social studies teacher, "What exactly is the pursuit of happiness?"

And I think I got some, if I remember correctly, the response was something about property.

That what Jefferson really meant was just property.

That was happiness.

That's not what Jefferson meant.

And you describe in wonderful detail the relationship with Epicureanism.

For our audience, could you explain that a little bit more?

You've mentioned it briefly, but I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit.

- Well, I think your poor social studies teacher was influenced by a bad book by Carl Degler that really influenced a lot of 20th century historians.

Degler says the Constitution is all about John Locke.

and John Locke has a phrase "Life, liberty, and property."

Jefferson, in a fascinating move, takes that phrase and substitutes happiness.

And it's a hugely important word.

To have a nation whose fundamental law says, "Our citizens are about life, liberty and happiness," well happiness is...

I got to say, Jefferson, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Jefferson liked sex, good wine, and pretty women.

So there was a bit of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but it wasn't just that.

It also was prudent, wise living.

On the other hand, I think Jefferson uses Epicureanism a bit as a way of becoming emotionally distant.

The interesting thing is the more I researched this book, the more I thought I understood Washington and Madison.

Different people, but really interesting people who you could get your arms around.

Jefferson feels to me a little bit like the giant marshmallow man in "Ghostbusters."

(Jim laughs) You can never really get your arms around him.

When you reach out it just sort of... You don't touch anything, it just sort of... Jefferson used Epicureanism a bit to withdraw.

He really did kind of act remotely frequently.

This may explain his terrible handling of the governorship of Virginia during the Revolution.

He really did not pay attention to what was it going on, he reacted poorly to it.

He nearly was captured by the British because he was neglecting the situation.

And later on his excuse was, "Oh I don't know what anything about being a military person."

Well, dude, don't become governor in the middle of a revolution.

(Jim laughs) Jefferson can be very frustrating in that, that he's very elusive.

I got to say, the more...

There's an old saying among American historians.

"The more you know about George Washington, the more you admire him."

And I think the same is true of Madison.

But the more I learned about Jefferson, the less I admired him, the more frustrated I became by him.

Of all the founders, with him you have the greatest gap between words and action, between rhetoric and actually how he lived his life.

So he's hanging out in Paris and he's talking a good liberal game about how slavery really is bad.

He comes back to America and he never does anything about it.

- So speaking of slavery, you know, for all the talk of freedom in the early republic, slavery was accepted.

Obviously women were not given the right to vote, and Native Americans, the people who were here first and had been here for thousands of years, were persona non grata, not even recognized as people.

Explain that.

- In fact, slaves weren't really recognized as people.

One of the most horrible things that Jefferson ever wrote was a letter in which he just noted in an aside that "his farm produced enough food to feed all his animals, including the Negroes."

- Wow.

- Two things about slavery.

The founders relied on the fact of ancient slavery to justify it.

They didn't know, or they neglected the fact that ancient slavery is very different from American chattel slavery.

With the exception of the Spartans, who were brutal, ancient slavery was not as brutal as American slavery.

And second, ancient slavery, Rome and Greece, was not based on race.

and American race-based slavery involved redefining these people as not human.

Whereas in Rome, they were recognized as humans who had through misfortune become slaves.

But a slave could be freed and the children of a freed slave could hold public office.

That really didn't happen in this country.

With the exception of a few years after the civil war, that really didn't happen, black people holding office in this country, until the late 1960s.

So we're within my lifetime only now catching up where the Romans were on some aspects of slavery.

- So the book ends with sort of a personal reflection about where we are now and some things that we need to do to get our our republic back in order.

We've got a couple of minutes left here.

I wonder if you could just maybe walk us through what you think we need to do as citizens now and what the American Republic needs to do to move forward.

- I'd say first, don't panic.

Second I'd say the Constitution is a resilient machine and it has wisdom in it that we may not recognize.

It was only until last month that I noticed one aspect that surprised me.

The states run the presidential election, not the federal government.

It seems almost counterintuitive.

Why would the states run federal elections?

Well, we saw why.

Had president Trump had his hand on the lever of that election, he would simply deny the outcome.

I think the second thing we need to think about is the Constitution was designed to be amended.

That's why they're called amendments, to be changed.

We've been kind of lazy in this country about that.

There were a lot of amendments in the first hundred years of the country.

Not so much in our last hundred years.

One amendment I would think would be good would be 18 year terms for the Supreme Court instead of life terms.

Another amendment I'd like to see would be to restrict big money in politics.

To say, "No, corporations are not people.

Corporations do not have all the rights that people have.

And corporations and other large entities need to get out of politics."

Third thing I'd like to think about is whether the biggest states should have three senators and the smallest states should have one Senator, which would also change the electoral college and make it more democratic in its representation.

- Do you- - Do you think- Go ahead, Wayne.

- No, do you think there's a realistic chance of any of those amendments being proposed and eventually passed?

- You never know.

I didn't think until last week that would we be seeing a right wing invasion of the Capitol building that resulted in the murder of a police officer.

This country is full of surprises.

I was talking two weeks ago to a reporter saying, "I really think you should look into how the National Guard might be used in the next few weeks."

He said, "Oh no, that's not gonna happen."

Well, now we have the National Guard sleeping on the floor of the US Capitol building with weapons for fear of an attack on the inauguration process in the next 10 days.

- We've got about 20 seconds left, Tom.

You know, one of the things that is really prominent among a lot of liberal activists last few years is a disdain for the electoral college.

Do you think that, is it taken seriously enough now as an institution to actually do its job as a final filter in the selection of the president?

Or do we need to rethink that, not just because of the democracy piece of it, but just because it doesn't do what it was intended to do anymore?

- It's worth examining, but I would just, like with the example of the states running elections, be careful of fiddling with the shock absorbers.

It's a shock absorber, and this country is a violent country sometimes.

Shock absorbers are good things to have.

- Tom Ricks, the book is "First Principles."

Congratulations.

That's all the time we have this week.

If you want to know more about "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on Facebook and Twitter, or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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