New Frontiers

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Charlotte Tate
From the Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs at Middlebury College, this is New
Frontiers. I’m Charlotte Tate, the associate director of the Rohatyn Center. In this
episode, host Mark Williams sits down with political scientist Bert Johnson to
discuss the January 6 insurrection and the state of American democracy today.

CROWD CHANTING

Bert Johnson
My first reaction, like a lot of people, was one of anger. When I lived in
Washington, I felt like every time I walked past the Capitol or the White House or
the Supreme Court building, it was a great privilege to see these monuments to
democracy that people all over the world don't get to see every day. And to see
that invaded by this force was deeply upsetting.

Mark Williams
When Donald Trump ran for the presidency in 2015 and ran on a populist
campaign, political scientists who had studied populist politics in other countries
took note, I was one of them. We'd seen how populism transformed the political
landscape in various countries, polarizing polities, undermining governing
institutions and debilitating political parties. As the 2016 election approached, it
wasn't clear if the United States could escape the kind of turmoil and democratic
debilitation that populism had brought to other countries and which Trump's
campaign gave signs of bringing to America. As things turned out, America didn't
escape. Donald Trump's time in office culminated with his supporters waging a
violent assault on the US Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a
majority rule, and stop the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden. What are we
to make of the January 6th insurrection? What does it tell us about ourselves as
Americans and the state of our democracy? And with another presidential
election approaching and an indicted Donald Trump the likely Republican
candidate, how might our parties, courts, and justice department act in ways that
could safeguard democracy or threaten it even more?

To get objective answers to these questions, I turned to Bert Johnson–a professor
of political science, expert on American politics, and a faculty fellow at
Middlebury’s Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs. I asked Bert what he was doing on January 6, 2021, and what his initial reaction to the insurrection were.

Bert Johnson
Well, that's a good question. I'd like to start with a story and I'd like to back us up
even farther to 1994 when I was living in Washington, DC, right after graduating
college and working at a consulting firm there. And there was this momentous
election in 1994. And on election night, I remember watching the returns come in
and I lived in an apartment right on Capitol Hill, and I saw this massive change
happening out there in the country. There was it seemed like turmoil all around
the country, people getting defeated for office Republicans winning elections. And
it was quite clear that the Republicans were going to take over Congress for the
first time in decades. And I turned off the TV, walked out my front door and went to the Capitol and
went around to the front of the Capitol and all was peaceful. It was brightly lit. I
looked out onto the mall to the Washington Monument and there was not a
sound. And then I heard a little bit of a sound behind me and I turned to see who
was there. And it was a young couple who had gone up to the steps of the capitol
to make out. And I thought to myself, this is gonna be alright. Things are gonna be
fine. We just had an election, we had a transfer of power. Things will be fine. The
country will go on, the rules and norms of the democracy will continue. And I
went back to my apartment. Now, fast forward to January 6th where you started
this off, and I couldn't help as I watched from Burlington, Vermont, in my house,
those people storming up the very steps that I was sitting on that night in 1994, to
engage in this violent insurrection. And at the time, of course, I like, like everybody
else thought, what in the world has happened here? And particularly what
changed between that night in 1994 and that day in 2021? And that's what we're
puzzling over.

Mark Williams
At that time as you watched it unfold, how did you process what you were
witnessing? How did you make sense of what was happening at that point?

Bert Johnson
Well, I think my first reaction, like a lot of people, was one of anger. And to see
that was deeply upsetting. So that was my initial reaction. I think it took me a little
while to get back into the shoes of a scholar to think about it in terms of, okay,
well what are the precursors, the causes, and what are going to be the
consequences of this momentous event? So, I felt a very personal connection and
was horrified to see what was taking place.

Mark Williams
Now, as a student of American politics, would this kind of uprising against
democracy in the United States have surprised the Bert Johnson of 2016, 2017, or
was it something that Bert Johnson could have foreseen happening in the U.S.?

Bert Johnson
There's sort of two ways to answer that question. One is, if I think back to the
election of 2016, there’d been violent rhetoric in part of the campaign. There had
been rallies where Trump had essentially called upon his supporters to eject
people violently. What did surprise me in 2021 was how kind of a wink and a nod
at election rallies in 2015 and 2016 turned into essentially a full throated call by
Donald Trump to march over to the Capitol and show them who's boss,
essentially. I think that sort of overt effort by the part of the President of the United States to
overturn an election, that's really surprising to me. And I would say also that it is
surprising to me that the Capitol was capable of being breached by a crowd of
2000.

Mark Williams
Well, what do you take away from the insurrection? What do you take away first
as an American, and then what do you take away as a political scientist? Are the
takeaways different depending on which hat you're wearing?

Bert Johnson
Well, I think as an American one has to react emotionally to some of these things.
And as a scholar we try to react impassively. So I guess there is a bit of a difference
there. One thing to remember is that the vast majority of Americans, whether they were Republicans or Democrats, were not engaging in lawless violence that day. And I think that's important to remember, especially for people who want to
blame Republicans or Donald Trump or whoever. It's not all Republicans. But as a
political scientist, I think one thing that concerns me is not only when there is
violence like that, but when that violence is condoned and tolerated by leaders
who are willing to say, well, it wasn't that bad. That I think is a perilous step for a
democracy.

Mark Williams
To my mind, January 6 reflected a clear, but misguided rejection of democracy in
that those who stormed the Capitol had been led—quite deliberately—to lose
faith in our democratic system, in elections and the legal system, and in the
peaceful transfer of power. For me, what January 6th clearly showed was that even here in the US democracy was fragile; it can be lost, shattered. And this democratic backsliding — this
erosion of faith — didn’t start on January 6th. It’s been a long, gradual process of
confidence erosion. I wanted to know what Bert thought about this, and what might have caused so
many Americans to lose confidence in our democratic procedures.

Bert Johnson
So that's a good question because a lot of people who study American politics
have long viewed America as exceptional, for a lot of reasons. We've had
institutions, for example, that have been in place for hundreds of years and seem
not to have changed that much relative to institutions of other countries. So that
might make us feel less vulnerable to institutional change. But you're also right to
suggest that these changes have been a long time coming, particularly there's
been a decline in trust in government. And that decline in trust in government has
actually broadened to a decline in trust of large major institutions in this country
that started in the 1970s and just has continued trending downward ever since. So
that's fertile ground for populists who want to blame somebody for things that
are going wrong. So that is one element that has contributed to the rise of
populism and the skepticism about democratic institutions.

Mark Williams
What about parallels, if there are any, between the United States and threats to
democracy here versus threats to democracy in other contexts?

Bert Johnson
I think I see a lot of parallels. And one of the things that people who study
comparative politics are debating, as you know, is what causes the democratic
backsliding that we've seen. And the factors that people name, like unscrupulous
leaders, like racial and ethnic divisions, like economic inequality, boy, you know,
check, check, check. The United States has all of those things. And my hunch
would be, it's a lot of these things. They do seem to be happening here as they are
elsewhere.

Mark Williams
I've been struck by something. And that's that as more and more information
comes out, it seems clear that the January 6th insurrection was just part of a
broader multi-front effort to overturn the 2020 election. There were court
challenges that went through legal means. There was pressure put on state
election officials, there was pressure put on the vice president. There were calls
for states to decertify their own election results after they had been certified.
There were efforts to stop counting the electoral college votes, and of course,
even the scheme to recruit fake electors to the electoral college. And all of these
actions were aimed to deny majority rule in the presidential election. What do
you make of the scope of all of these efforts?

Bert Johnson
I think it is remarkable how many efforts there were and how many different
angles the Trump coterie, I don't even want to call them the Trump
administration, because of course many in the Trump administration even
opposed these efforts. But the Trump group to, as you say, mobilize fake electors,
try to convince elected officials at the local level to find votes as one Trump phone
call, put it, it's a shocking amount of activity. But I think the special counsel in this
case, Jack Smith, is wise to focus on these other kinds of things. To focus on the
conspiracy, to focus on the fake electors, because in the public mindset those
things are more squarely criminal than a speech which could be classified as free
speech.

Mark Williams
Well, let's shift gears a little bit. As of this recording, special prosecutor Jack Smith
has indicted Donald Trump three times on federal charges. First in Florida for the
theft of secret, highly classified government documents. Second in the
superseding indictment. Again, in Florida, classified documents case alleging
obstruction of justice, and finally on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United
States and obstruct an official proceeding, meaning the counting of the electoral
college votes, and to deny Americans their constitutional rights, meaning the right
to have their votes that were cast actually counted. Now, this third indictment was
levied in Washington, and it's related to the January 6th insurrection and other
efforts to overthrow and annul the election. Do you have any thoughts on the
indictments as they stand? Not as they relate to party politics per se, but as the
indictments might relate to American democracy?

Bert Johnson
This calls to mind a survey I took a few months ago from an organization called
Bright Line Watch. This is an organization that focuses on potential democratic
backsliding in the United States. And they periodically survey who they call
experts, political scientists and observers of politics about various issues. And one
of the surveys asked experts point blank, do you think Trump committed crimes in
the documents case? Do you think he committed crimes in the January 6th case?
And then in a separate set of questions, they asked, do you think Trump should be
charged? And do you think charging Trump in these cases would be a threat to
democracy? And it occurs to me that it is possible to answer yes to all those
questions. It is possible that yes, Trump committed crimes, yes, he should be
indicted. And yes, a charge and a trial could represent a threat to democracy
because I think it could cause serious instability. We will see going forward what
results from this. But storm clouds are looming on the horizon when the person
who looks likely to be the Republican nominee for president is under indictment
and is running a campaign where he's trying to tear down the institutions that he
sees as a raid against him. And that I would say his followers also see as a raid
against him and a raid against them.

Mark Williams
Institutions that underpin democratic governance in the United States.
Bert Johnson
Absolutely right. Like an independent justice department, independent judges,
you know, the right of people to have their votes counted. All of these things are
quintessential elements of our system. And because he sees them as his enemies,
he's willing to tear them down.

Mark Williams
I was just going to ask you, what we might expect in election season where one of
the candidates from a major party is running as an indicted citizen, perhaps in the
midst of a trial even.

Bert Johnson
Right. And I think that could be dangerous. What I think is the best case for
democracy is not necessarily that Trump get convicted and thrown into prison.
What the best case for democracy is that he be thoroughly discredited. Now that's
hard to do, and it's not clear that these indictments have moved anybody who is
on his side off of his side.

Mark Williams
I found Bert’s assessment both intriguing and alarming. Considering the questions
he’d been asked to entertain: Did Trump commit crimes? Should he be prosecuted
for those crimes? And could prosecuting him threaten US democracy? If it’s really
possible to answer all these questions affirmatively, was it safer then, not to
prosecute the former president? Would that alternative be the best way to
safeguard our democracy? I put this question back to Bert.

Bert Johnson
The alternative is more dangerous. And that's why I said you can answer yes to all
those questions. He should be prosecuted. Because if you don't prosecute him,
then it's a signal that this is all right. That if you're the president of the United
States, then you're above the law. You can do things that other people can't.

Mark Williams
It’s the Nixon argument.

Bert Johnson
That's right. If you're the president, it's not illegal. Right. Well, that's not the way
America is. That's not the tradition that was established when George Washington
stepped down after two terms.

Mark Williams
That’s not the law.

Bert Johnson
And that's not the law. We have to reinforce the rule of law applies to everybody,
even if they're the former president of the United States. So yes, the alternative is
worse, but it puts the justice department, Jack Smith, in a very difficult position of
having to thread this needle of not saying that this is permitted in the United
States, but also trying not to disrupt the electoral system in such a way that
democracy is further under threat. So I think that this is partly why his indictments
read the way they do. I would urge everybody if they haven't read the indictments
to read those indictments, they are narratives. It's called a speaking indictment.
He's trying to teach whoever's reading the indictment something about what
happened.

Mark Williams
And it's not written in a way that is off-putting to an educated reader, to an
interested reader.

Bert Johnson
Right. He is writing it in a way that is trying to anticipate some of the arguments
that Trump's supporters might make. This is a vendetta, this is nonsense. This is all
about punishing free speech. He's trying to respond to each of those points within
the indictment itself. And he no doubt will at trial as well.

Mark Williams
Bert, what do you think it says about the state of American democracy that one of
the main political parties might actually nominate and keep supporting a
candidate who's charged with and perhaps convicted of committing felonies?

Bert Johnson
That's dangerous. I would say that one of the things that did happen in the 1970s,
along with a erosion of trust in government, was that the parties became more
the creatures of activists than the creatures of party elites. There was a series of
party reforms in the 1970s as a result of a disastrous 1968 Democratic national
convention. We might remember that from Chicago. But as a result, the parties
became more beasts that went to the whims of the activist base, rather than the
particular elites that you might think were in charge of the parties.

Mark Williams
The guys in the back room…

Bert Johnson
Smoke-filled room. Yeah, so those folks lost a lot of power. And the people who
gained power were the people on the ground, the activists, the passionate people.
You're not passionate if you are a moderate, typically. You're passionate if you're
on one extreme or the other. And we've seen this in both parties most recently,
particularly the Republican party. Those passionate activists are the ones that are
in charge. The other thing to point out is that there have been, not a lot, but a
significant number of respected Republican leaders who have pushed back on
Donald Trump and the anti-democratic tendencies that surround him. Liz Cheney,
Secretary of State Ensberg in Georgia, Governor Kemp in Georgia, Governor Ducey
in Arizona,

Mark Williams
Adam Kinzinger,

Bert Johnson
Adam Kinzinger. There are people like Governor Phil Scott of Vermont who have
repudiated Trump quite directly. And I think it's important to say that there are
Republicans out there who are committed to democracy and are doing their best
to try to support it. Now, there are also people who don't seem to share those
commitments. But I think it would be too broad of a brush to paint the entire
party with Trumpism, even though Trumpism has a pretty solid grip on it right
now. It looks like.

Mark Williams
What's happening at the presidential level isn't the only thing that I think has
negatively affected US democracy or American's faith in our democratic system.
There are two other things I'd like to get your thoughts on Bert. One is the
Supreme Court, and the other is what's going on at the state and the local levels
of government. So let's start with the Supreme Court. For some time now
Americans have been, I think, losing confidence in the Court for various reasons,
and there's been increasing talk on the need to reform the Court either by
restructuring it or imposing a code of ethics on the justices, or perhaps both. Can
you speak to us a little bit about why confidence in the Supreme Court has fallen
so low, whether the restructuring and the code of ethics ideas have any merit, and
what steps the Court might take to help ensure that American democracy
continues?

Bert Johnson
Well, in a way, what has happened to the Supreme Court is what has happened to
the rest of us democracy. Judges and justices have become political footballs in a
way. When they get nominated, there's a political battle over whether they should
be confirmed. And when they're on the Court and issue rulings, there's a political
battle over what those rulings mean and what they should be. And starting in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, right around the same time that everything else in
American politics was changing, if you followed judges' decisions and you've
separated them out by whether they were nominated by a Democrat or
Republican president, turns out those judges' decisions were quite predictable
based on which president appointed them a Democrat or Republican.

Mark Williams
Are you speaking of judges or justices?

Bert Johnson
Both, although there's more data on federal judges because there's more of them.
So the real evidence is with federal judges. But the same can be said about the
Supreme Court. So when that kind of predictability sets in, and it becomes quite
clear to the public that whatever the Court's going to rule on abortion depends
upon which president named the most justices, that's going to erode confidence
in an institution that is at least claiming to be the impartial umpires. Well that
doesn't strike you as particularly honest when it's quite predictable how the
umpires are gonna rule based on which team stadium they're playing in. I guess
there's the analogy. So I think that is one of the reasons why trust in the Court has
gone down.

Mark Williams
Could you give examples of that predictability?

Bert Johnson
Chief among them is the Roe v Wade overturning, but there are others. It can
seem, sometimes, like–affirmative action, there's another one that just recently
was issued; gun rights; Bush v Gore going back to the 2000 election–so it can
seem like the die is cast before the arguments get made before the Court in some
of those high profile cases.

Mark Williams
Are there things that the Court could do that could help safeguard the continuity
of democracy? That could increase its perceived legitimacy?

Bert Johnson
I think what John Roberts is trying to do sometimes may be the right idea, which is
to rule narrowly whenever possible. He tried to do this in the Dobbs case on
abortion and failed to muster a majority on his side. So he wound up writing for
himself, but he advocated for a very narrow scope of that ruling. And I think that's
the kind of thing that would help preserve the Court's legitimacy, is if they didn't
take steps to sweep away decades worth of precedent. I think they could establish
an ethics code, that would help. But the other thing I would say about the Court,
before we leave the Court, is that I would advise those who are on the Democratic
side to be cautious about completely revamping the structure of the Court or
advocating revamping the structure of the Court…

Mark Williams
The idea of being to increase the number of justices from nine to…

Bert Johnson
To 15 or to limit terms or something like that. I think those kinds of disruptions to
an institution that has existed in its current form for over a hundred years and
some form similar to its current form for hundreds of years, that's destabilizing
and that can be harmful to democracy in ways that are unpredictable.
Mark Williams
Now, what about the state and local levels of government? If we look at what's
going on inside the state governments, do we see any indications of democratic
backsliding there? And if so, are these minor instances or are they major ones?

Bert Johnson
I think we definitely see instances of democratic backsliding at the state and local
levels. And one of the interesting features of American politics that is not
appreciated is the distinction between the way in which institutions can be
manipulated at the state and local levels versus the national level. We don't see
institutional change very much at the national level. Most of the institutions are in
the Constitution and it's really hard to change the Constitution. But when
institutions get easier to change, easier to alter, we see more of that happening to
the benefit of whoever happens to hold power. And particularly recently, because
Republicans have had solid, sometimes super majorities in a lot of state
legislatures, we've seen that happening in state legislatures. We've seen in places
like Wisconsin, the Republican legislature limiting the power of the Democratic
governor. We've seen that happen in North Carolina as well. There are attempts to
do it in Arizona now that there's a Republican legislature and a Democratic
governor. And since 2013 when the Supreme Court relaxed the Voting Rights Act,
we've seen increasing attempts to limit and constrain voting rights in various
states, voter ID laws, limitations on drop boxes, things like that. So these
institutional manipulations, they're just easier at the state and local level. And so
that's why we see more of them.

Mark Williams
And in your opinion, they reflect less enthusiasm for full participatory democracy?

Bert Johnson
I think so. I think the limitations on voting are definitely in that category. I think
the limitations on gubernatorial power that seem to only limit Democrats, or one
side, that's part of it too. One of the things that's been part of the decline in trust
over time is that for institutions that are easier to change, sometimes the only
thing holding back changes in those institutions are the trust in those institutions
and the norms against institutional change. And because of the erosion of that
trust and those norms, we're seeing more change than ever at state and local
institutions.

Mark Williams
Yes. And it's a nationwide phenomenon. By that I mean it's spread across the
country in various regions.

Bert Johnson
Right. And you'll see this is another characteristic of the state and local
level–innovation somewhere has the capability of just spreading elsewhere.

Mark Williams
Yes, there’s the copycat effect.

Bert Johnson
And there are interest groups out there that bridge state boundaries and can take
a piece of legislation that was introduced in Arizona and say, “Oh, this worked
here, let's go introduce it in Ohio.”

Mark Williams
Around the world, democratic, political systems have come under increasing
stress. In many countries, democratic governance has already given way to
autocratic rule, and a number of analysts, including some in US Intelligence circles,
have warned that America’s own democracy could head down a similar path. I
wanted to know what Bert thought about this general trend of democratic
backsliding and what steps scholars have suggested which might help preserve
democratic rule.

Bert Johnson
It’s interesting to think about what the literature says about this, because the
literature talks about lots of different possible causes: unscrupulous leaders, racial
and ethnic divisions, polarization, economic inequality. And so ways to address
democratic backsliding are gonna have to address some of those things. Now,
those are not easy things to address, and they can't all be addressed at once. But
one place to start is polarization. And what we know about polarization in the
United States is that there's this toxic partisanship that seems to exist and be
consistent with a layering of identities on top of each other.
So what I mean is your ethnic identity, your religious identity, your geographic
identity, all is consistent with your party identity in the United States. And that
didn't always used to be the case. You know, in the 1950s and 1960s, you might
live in a big city and be a Republican and feel perfectly not out of place. But these
days, if you live in a big city, you're probably surrounded by Democrats, whether
you're a Democrat or Republican. If you're living in a rural area, you're a
Republican. And these overlapping layering identities, this is something that the
political scientist Liliana Mason has studied a lot and has found that it leads to this
really toxic partisanship that isn't really about issues. It's about identity. Feeling
very negatively about the other side, whoever you may see them as being. So if
there's a way to create more crisscrossing identities, you create an environment
like the political scientist David Truman used to talk about 70 years ago that
involves cross-cutting identities. That is a positive step. Well, I may not agree with
this person on politics, but she and I share this interest in this other thing. And so I
can still relate to her. If we can do that, that would be a plus.

Mark Williams
Do you think that the state that we're in right now has anything to teach the
country about democracy? And by that I mean, when I moved to this state some
decades ago, I believe it was governed by a democratic governor who was
replaced by a Republican governor, who was replaced by a Democratic governor
who was replaced, I think, by a Democratic or Republican governor. It's gone back
and forth and back and forth; most of the time the governors have been fairly
popular regardless of party. And at the national level, the electorate typically goes
democratic, but it's an electorate in this state that doesn't seem to have a
problem voting for Republicans to run the state in terms of who sits in the State
House and being governor. Is there something happening in Vermont you think
that might be transferrable or could provide a set of lessons for those interested in
preserving democracy and, sort of, normal democracy at the national level?

Bert Johnson
Well, I think the Republicans who've been leaders of Vermont recently, Phil Scott,
currently governor, and then two governors before him, Jim Douglas, they have
been fiscally conservative, relatively moderate Republicans. So they fit the state
pretty well, especially considering that voters of Vermont seem to want a balance
between Democrats in the legislature who want to spend a lot of money
addressing social problems versus the fiscal conservatism of governors who want
to put the brakes on that because they're concerned about taxation. I think that
balance is the key to why Vermont turns out the way it does. And I do think
there's something terrific about taking my classes to the State House in
Montpelier and having conversations with Democratic politicians, Republican
politicians, and Progressives–we have a third party in Vermont–who can all get
around a table and have a jovial conversation with one another. I think that's
intangible, but that is almost the most important thing that we want to be able to
model, for everybody but certainly for our children, having conversations with
people we disagree with and not having a shouting match.

Mark Williams
And still striving towards the greater good.

Bert Johnson
That's right.

Mark Williams
Still striving for the public good, the greater good, making compromise along the
way to get there.

Mark Williams
Can we circle back to January 6th for just a bit? I'm curious, how do you view
January 6th now as opposed to when it happened? And has distance and more
information changed your assessment in any way?

Bert Johnson
That's an interesting question. In a way, we've had a lot of details filled in by the
January 6th committee and the indictments, so we have more knowledge of
exactly what happened. I think its implications are still somewhat unknown
because we haven't had the next presidential election. And that's why I think this
is going to be a risky year for American democracy as we move through this
presidential campaign. It could be that January 6th was an anomaly, it was a one
time thing. There have been instances of political violence in the US in the past,
many times over hundreds of years, and this could just be one more of those
instances or it could be a turning point. And I'm hoping it's not.

Mark Williams
A few days ago I saw the results of a March 2023 Quinnipiac University poll, in
which 67 percent of respondents said that they believed American democracy was
in danger of collapse. And 48 percent thought that there could well be another
capital insurrection in the United States. Response?

Bert Johnson
One of the interesting polls that I saw was not too different from that about a year
ago in the New York Times, and it asked people whether they saw democracy as
being under threat. And a similar percent–70 percent, 75 percent–said that yes,
they thought democracy was under threat. But when you asked them specifically,
Republicans felt like the threats to democracy were coming from Democrats; 75
percent of Republicans felt like, oh yes, Democrats are a threat to democracy. Joe
Biden is a threat to democracy. Nancy Pelosi is a threat to democracy. And of
course, Democrats are saying the same thing about Donald Trump, the
Republicans, and so on. So one of the important other questions to ask is,
“Whether you think democracy is under threat or not, do you have faith in
democracy?” Let's cultivate faith in democracy, and then let's try to convince our
opponents that we are not trying to put democracy at risk. I think both of those
things are hard to do, but I think they're important.

Mark Williams
Do you think that the republic is safer and more secure today than it was back on
January 6th, 2021?

Bert Johnson
I think it is because I think the person in the White House is no longer trying to
overthrow the government. But again, I do think we are in a position of being at
risk in the next year, year and a half. And I think it's incumbent on all of us to be
vigilant about that risk.

Mark Williams
Finally, for anyone who's listening to this podcast and who's concerned about
American democracy, what can they do as individuals to bolster the prospects of
democracy's endurance?

Bert Johnson
One thing that's important to remember is that there's this literature, and the
name for the literature in political science is democratic backsliding. But that
almost conjures up an inevitable image of sliding down a slope, like a slippery
slope. And one thing to keep in mind is that this is not necessarily a linear process.
We're not inevitably doomed to move away from democracy. Just as historically,
we have not always been the perfect democracy. There have been times in this
country's history, many times, where we have not lived up to our democratic
ideals. So let's get away from thinking that anything is inevitable. The other thing
to remember is that many times in our history as a country, there have been brave
people whose names we don't always know, who have stood up and done the
right thing. And the right thing could be a small thing, could be contributing in a
way, it could be building something in your community–rebuilding that trust that
we've lost in the last few decades, I think is really important. And we all have a
role to play in that.

Mark Williams
Well, this was a very fascinating discussion. Bert Johnson, I'm so happy that you
made time to stop and visit with us. And thank you for sharing your thoughts here
on New Frontiers.

Bert Johnson
Thanks for having me.

Srivats Ramaswamy
A native of Minnesota, Professor Bert Johnson now lives in Burlington, Vermont. A
health enthusiast, he is both a vegetarian and an avid runner. In fact, he enjoys
competing in ultra marathon contests, and just this past summer ran two separate
100 mile races: one in Colorado and the other in Finland. Outside of the
classroom, students might bump into him hiking the trails, running in the woods,
or buying a Diet Coke at the campus convenience store, Midd Express.