Yuval Levin, a scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, is one of the comparatively few conservative intellectuals today whose works actively eschew pessimism and division, instead offering hope and inspiration to Americans of all political stripes by reminding them that their disagreements need not produce discord and dysfunction. In A Time to Build (2020), he encouraged citizens to invest in institutions and thereby find their way back to one another. Now in his new book American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation — and Could Again, he extends this prescription to our most foundational institution of all.
Levin argues that the path out of our malaise requires a rediscovery of the Constitution — our “covenant” — and its incentives to govern a certain way. He argues that we will restore comity to our debates and achieve a fractious but discernible unity if we return to properly understood republican constitutional precepts.
Levin believes that most Americans construe our Constitution too narrowly as a structure to enable law- and policy-making. While it is indeed such a structure, he maintains, it is much more. The Constitution also seeks to create an institutional and political culture of broadly distributed power, where no one and therefore everyone is in charge. Competing factions must work together, tolerating and respecting differences rather than seeking to destroy political opponents — and thus the Constitution is also a framework for union and unity, one that helps forge common ground in American life and enable social peace.
For Levin, the Constitution relies upon an anthropology that requires citizens to pursue the common good amidst diversity:
At the heart of modern republicanism is an idea of the human being and citizen rooted in the highest traditions of the West: that we are each fallen and imperfect yet made in a divine image and possessed of equal dignity; that individuals are social creatures meant to live together; that living together requires a commitment to pursue the common good; and that this pursuit in a free and, therefore, diverse society requires of the citizen selflessness, accommodation, restraint, deliberation, and service. (82)
The constitutional structure slows the process of change so that citizens working in good faith can forge consensus on difficult matters. A civic culture defined by online warriors, performers, and influencers badly misunderstands what our Constitution seeks to achieve.
Levin advances longstanding conservative criticisms of American political institutions and practices, yet he does not make predictable demands to shrink the federal government to its size of a century ago. Neither does he advocate culture war. Rather, he calls for the states, our political parties, and the federal government to recover the republican principles embedded in the Constitution and articulated by Madison and Hamilton in the essays of The Federalist.
Levin pursues this thesis in discussions about Congress, the executive, and the judiciary, demonstrating how each relies on different mechanisms of leadership selection and instantiates different incentive structures. All operate under limits and constraints, but for the system to work, all must do more than just stay in their lanes — they must cooperate by negotiating, bargaining, and compromising with the common good in view.
He develops this theme further in chapters on the relationship between national and state governments, the constitutional amendment process, and changes in the political parties’ operations. Of particular note, Levin highlights how the Reconstruction-era amendments — those that abolished slavery, defined citizenship, and guaranteed the vote to formerly enslaved men — created a constitutional order that better reflects the ideals in the Declaration of Independence.
Levin fears that the U.S. has strayed from the republicanism envisioned for each branch — a republicanism emphasizing communal self-rule and active but limited government. For example, where Congress once would periodically revisit legislation on critical policy matters and reach new consensus as public opinion shifted and conditions on the ground changed, now that body writes ambiguous laws and hands rulemaking over to administrators. Such overbroad delegation is made worse because presidents are no longer good-faith executors of legislation; rather, they bring in political partisans to implement laws in ways they favor. The federal courts are called on to mediate the resulting controversies, but judges increasingly rely on their own political predilections to engineer rulings. These are all categorical violations of the republican spirit of the constitutional order.
Levin’s solutions lie mainly in recalling the political culture and practices fostered by a proper understanding of the Constitution. Thus, American Covenant recommends only a few concrete reforms. For example, Levin believes that modifications to the partisan primary system would elect more moderates. Congressional leaders could improve the legislature’s functioning by relinquishing more control to the committees and their chairs, so that members can deliberate more freely — often behind closed doors where difficult deals can be struck. Especially heartening, Levin embraces expansion of the House to reflect population growth from the last century, when Congress stopped adding seats. This reform would make the House more representative of the broad array of Americans.
These recommendations notwithstanding, Levin remains a political philosopher and thus deals mostly in ideas rather than actions. American Covenant offers an extensive meditation on the Constitution and how to think about it. Unfortunately, these notions often seem to float in the ether, above the din of day-to-day politics, and many readers will find the book too abstract.
Levin is careful to insist that “I am not of the view that our Constitution is perfect or that its flaws should be shrouded and ignored.” (8) He acknowledges that what he calls “the modern deformations of the constitutional system” cast doubt on some of the implicit assumptions of its Framers. (229) Yet he is not immune to the conservative tendency to approach the Constitution as a kind of sacred text: immaculately conceived, infallible, not bound by time and place. His reluctance to admit that the Constitution’s very design has at times led to negative outcomes, combined with his blithe assurance that its design is so elegant and self-reinforcing that if we can just adhere to it with greater fidelity all will be well, makes him appear epistemologically similar to the theologian who declares that all answers lie in “getting back to the Bible.”
Levin’s esteemed sources — the Constitution, Madison’s notes on the Constitutional Convention, and the Federalist — remain historical documents. They demand a historical, not theological approach. Historical treatment means understanding them as the ideas of particular men, written in a specific time and place, and aimed at distinct purposes.
Appropriate historicizing alters the way we read those documents. It leads us to appreciate how the convention’s politics shaped its messy deliberations and sometimes problematic outcomes. Thus, the Constitution appears slightly less magically coherent, elegant, and self-correcting. A historical approach recalls that the essays of the Federalist aimed to secure a political goal: ratification of the Constitution in New York. Those essays defended some features (the three-fifths clause; no Bill of Rights) that Americans today rightly scorn. These earthly elements puncture any halo around these documents, and they must inform a useful understanding of them.
Historicizing the Constitution does not denigrate it nor give license to disregard it. Rather, it creates room for a wider array of questions about how best to structure American governance, politics, and political culture. Viewing the Constitution as quasi-sacred discourages productive thought about avenues for change.
Levin’s wholehearted embrace of the Electoral College offers an excellent case in point and demonstrates the peril of squeezing unwieldy facts into elegant theory. He acknowledges that “the most peculiar of all the institutions of our system” never played its intended role, yet maintains that “on the whole it has worked remarkably well.” (173, 175) But by skipping quickly over the Electoral College’s origins as a practical solution to help the Convention move beyond nearly intractable disagreements, he never wrestles with the theoretical or practical consequences of its failure to operate as the Framers intended.
Further, in expounding the “benefits” of the Electoral College, Levin repeats a set of recycled theories that lack supporting data. In his telling, the Electoral College forces political parties to assemble broad, centrist coalitions, but this claim flies in the face of today’s political reality. Forcing the presidential contest to unfold mostly in the swing states, he argues, requires the candidates to appeal to moderates in those places. But wouldn’t it be better if candidates appealed to the millions of moderates nationwide, not just to moderates in a handful of states?
These criticisms aside, today’s citizens and politicians need Levin’s important reminders that discord and disagreement are part of the human condition and that properly channeling these can make us better. In a political culture with ample outlets for demonizing, but few spaces for problem-solving, we need hopeful visions to point us toward something better. Levin has offered a thought-provoking and extensive restatement of the American Constitution.
Carolyn Dupont is Professor of History at Eastern Kentucky University. Stephen Clements is Professor of Political Science at Asbury University. They co-lead the Jessamine County Braver Angels Alliance, a politically mixed group of citizens concerned about polarization. Carolyn leans a bit to the left, and Steve identifies as center-right.