America, Are We Ready: Democracy and Impeachment and Inclusion

On this day-after-Thanksgiving, with just under a year until Americans elect their next president, step back from the headlines and explore what’s threatened and what’s missing in American democracy with parts of the national call-in special America Are We Ready? Democracy and the Year Ahead, hosted by Brian Lehrer:

Hour One: Impeaching 

The impeachment process now underway flows from the founders’ decision to have a strong presidency. Impeachment was included as a check and balance if all else fails to prevent a president from acting like a monarch. We examine the presidency itself and its place in American democracy in the context of the impeachment and election campaigns now simultaneously under way with guests:

• Mary Frances Berry, professor of constitutional, legal and African American history at the University of Pennsylvania, former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and the author of twelve books including, History Teaches Us to Resist: How Progressive Movements Have Succeeded in Challenging Times; and
• Jeffrey Engel, founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a co-author of Impeachment: An American History, and author of When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War.

Hour Two: Including

One of the biggest drivers of our politics today is that so many different groups of Americans feel left out of the decisions made by the people in power. It’s a reason for the popularity of Donald Trump on one end, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders on another, and more. And it reflects a fundamental tension that goes back to the founding of the country - a tug of war between majority rule as one tenet of democracy, and protection from the tyranny of the majority as another.  We examine the roots of today’s epidemic of feeling left out and how democracy can best be responsive to cure it with guests:

• Kai Wright, host of WNYC's The Stakes, a podcast about social change, former host of Indivisible, a live national call-in show that WNYC convened during the Trump administration’s first 100 days;
• Charlie Sykes, Wisconsin-based editor-at-large of The Bulwark and host of the Bulwark podcast, author of several books, including How the Right Lost Its Mind and A Nation of Victims, a former host of Indivisible, a live national call-in show that WNYC convened during the Trump administration’s first 100 days; and former conservative radio host; and
• Sarah Smarsh, Kansas-based journalist and the author of Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, a National Book Award finalist.

Audio for the full three-hour program is available here: 

America Are We Ready? Democracy and the Year Ahead (Sunday, November 24)