The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; End of the Bicentennial Year

JIM LEHRER: Good evening from Washington on this New Year`s Eve. Robert MacNeil is off tonight. In a few hours the bicentennial year will be no more. The 200th birthday party will be over. The questions it leaves behind are many; like what, if anything did it really mean to most of us - outside of a few fireworks, some TV spectaculars and bicentennial minutes, and a lot of red, white and blue spread around the landscape. Was there an American self-renewal, a new dedication to the lofty principles that went into the founding of the United States 200 years ago? Well, this is the kind of thing we want to consider tonight with the distinguished political scientist, Martin Diamond.

Dr. Diamond is a professor at Northern Illinois University and an adjunct scholar of the American Enterprise Institute here in Washington. His scholarly specialty is the founding fathers and what they had in mind when they put it all together two centuries ago. We suspect that one of Dr. Diamond`s men, John Adams, would have been delighted with one aspect of what happened this year. In a letter to his wife about the 4th of July, Adams said, "It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with show, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of the country to the other, from this day forward, forevermore." (Film of 4th of July celebration) Dr. Diamond, is that what John Adams had in mind?

Dr. MARTIN DIAMOND: The last scene certainly looked like-it. That was first rate fireworks. I think that when he spoke of the pomp and ceremony, it included all the sorts of things just shown in that film clip.

LEHRER: Do these kinds of things have any value though when it comes right down to it? Do you think that the people that we saw and all the millions of other people who participated in some kind of bicentennial event, ceremony, or whatever had any real understanding of what it meant?

DIAMOND: I would guess they had as much understanding as the mass of people who made the events in the first place.

LEHRER: What do you mean?

DIAMOND: What I mean is that not everyone knows what`s going on all the time, and that there are all sorts of levels of understanding. There are philosophical levels of understanding, one might say poetic and artistic, but there are also gut reactions and understandings of the heart, and understandings in the bone, and there are many ways for people to understand their country and many ways to celebrate it. All need not be at the cerebral level.

LEHRER: Uh-huh. Look, a lot of people have suggested this whole thing was commercialized, that red, white and blue everything was around. Do you feel that way? Do you think it got out of hand, and in the process we did lose sight of the meaning of the event?

DIAMOND: I don`t think we lost sight of the meaning of the event, but certainly there was some over-commercialization of the event. But then, there always is. There`s over-commercialization of the Super Bowl; there`s over-commercialization of sport. It`s an evil, it`s a sin attendant upon our regime. Our way of doing things is always subject to an excess of commercialization. It`s a built-in defect to which we naturally tend.

LEHRER: Uh-hum. Let`s go beyond, now, the ceremonies, and the pomp and the circumstances and the re-creations and that kind of thing. It`s been suggested by critics of the people who ran the official bicentennial celebration, particularly the People`s Bicentennial Commission among others, that we blew it. We had an opportunity here in our 200th year to really examine what this country was all about in a deep, philosophical way, not only how we got where we are, but where we want to go from, this point on, and that all of the ceremonies and all of that commercialization and all that kind of blew the chance. Do you agree?

DIAMOND: No, not at all. And I think their gloomy predictions about how the 4th of July would work our proved false in the event. And I think their judgment, their assessment of what was the meaning of the bicentennial year was also erroneous. Let me go back to that film clip and that hoopla we saw. In addition to fireworks, and dancing and drinking beer, all of which are perfectly fine activities, in addition to the hoopla, in every state there were many, many cities, many, many towns and counties, countless other kinds of events. There were all sorts of restorations, all sorts of renewal, all sorts of beautification projects. There were all sorts of pageantry and ceremonies more carefully prepared and more historic in detail than those we saw. There were religious observances and there were endless forums and lectures at our 2,000 colleges and universities. And I don`t think we blew the chance. I think we made much of it.

LEHRER: Yes, but give me an example. What came out of all of this. Are we better off for having gone through this year?

DIAMOND: Oh, I think so. But you see, better off depends on a judgment as to what good is. In order to know what`s better, you have to know what good is, so what the best would be. What would have been a magnificent bicentennial celebration? It seems to me what one could have hoped and wished for was a sense on the part of the bulk of the American people, a sense and an awareness of the incredible duration of their political system and of its still viable character. That it is still firm, still capable of growth, and that it is still sufficient as the fundamental framework of their political liberties. Now that seems to me to be what the bicentennial should have aimed at, and it seems to me to be something that in fact was accomplished.

LEHRER: You really believe that? That the majority of the American people came away from this whole year with a greater feeling for just what you just said. I won`t try to repeat it because you said it so eloquently. But, you really believe that?

DIAMOND: Let me just express my deep regret that you found my statement eloquent because whenever someone tells you that something was eloquent, that means "no sale," That means that the words were fine, but they didn`t buy the idea. I believe that in appropriate ways the vast majority of the American people felt what we want them to feel about this bicentennial year and shared in it as much as its reasonable to expect. Now, I spent the bicentennial year giving what I hope were learned lectures, but that isn`t to be expected of my other 215 million, fellow Americans. Not everyone ought to be cerebrating about it. Not everyone ought to be writing books or giving lectures about it. What was the meaning of the things we saw. That drum and bugle corps. Let`s examine that kind of thing. The firing of the muskets. Very funny. But what it means is, in thousands of areas dozens and dozens of people in a local fife and drum corps meet regularly, have a sense of the importance of what they were doing, that they were going to contribute their time and energy to a civic celebration.

LEHRER: Yes, but didn`t the emphasis go on this kind of celebration of past patriots and the people who made it possible, and in the process, sweeping all the problems of the present that we have in 1976 under the rug so that we could revel in our history for a year, What I`m talking about is what did we get out of it that we can carry into the future of the United States at this point?

DIAMOND: First of all, a birthday party is no time for solving the problems of the third, American centennial. A birthday party is a time for revelry. One mustn`t be too.-serious about the bicentennial. Congress will pass laws. The new Carter Administration will formulate policy. There will be diplomacy. There will be d‚tente. There will be all sorts of struggles, and the American future will depend upon what our political process does day by day. A bicentennial is no time for a transmogrification of the whole of society. It`s a time for revelry.

LEHRER: You`ll have to admit that a lot of the rhetoric that went into this year, at the very beginning a year ago, was that we are going to have this great renewal and all that sort of thing. What you`re saying is that we should never have even talked about it in the first place, because it was unrealistic to think it was going to happen.

DIAMOND: Yes, that is what I would say is just another example of the over- promising, the exaggerated rhetoric of American public life. It doesn`t seem possible to have a good time, celebrating a remarkable event in a jolly, reasonable, and partially thoughtful way. It doesn`t seem possible. Instead we have to renew ourselves and renew our dedication. But Jim, I think we did renew our dedication. I think something very serious did take place during the bicentennial year, and let me make the case. At the beginning of the year we were still in the post Watergate mood. There was still a sense of sourness. There was much talk of alienation. All over the country there was a sense of malaise. You remember. Articles by the dozen on malaise, alienation and then all sorts of gloomy predictions about how sour the event was going to be, how commercialized, how tawdry. Do you remember the good time you had on the 4th of July week-end? I hope you do.

LEHRER: I do indeed. I was with thousands of people down on the Mall here in Washington. I had a great time.

DIAMOND: I was playing baseball and celebrating a class reunion with a half dozen friends from graduate school. But all over the country in a variety of ways, in the big cities, in the towns, all over the country there was an outpouring of good will, a sense that you know things aren`t so bad, that our fundamental, political framework is sound, and that we are fellow Citizens of a decent polity, utterly frustrating the expectations of the doomsayers. And at the end of the bicentennial year with the in-coming Administration, there is a sense of quietness, a sense of elm, and a readiness to face political problems and our ordinary, daily way. I think the bicentennial year saw a kind of getting over the sourness and getting over the sense of alienation. I really do think that it achieved its purpose.

LEHRER: All right. There were many events, one that has not got a lot of attention is one that was called the Assemblage of the Republic which took place at the National Archives on July the 2nd. It featured a big, 200th birthday cake and several key speakers. Among them Vice President Rockefeller, President Ford, Chief Justice Warren Burger, and House Speaker Carl Albert. Now, Dr. Diamond, you think that this was one of the most symbolic events of-the bicentennial year. Why?

DIAMOND: I should say that this program was one that the Bicentennial Advisory Council helped formulate, and as a member of the Council, I had a hand in its formulation. So I`m speaking about something that I was involved in the preparation of.

LEHRER: You are prejudiced in other words.

DIAMOND: A prejudiced witness, but I hope that my judgment nonetheless will be sound. I think what was important about that and what it symbolized was the assembling of the central principles of the American republic. The assembling of its essential principles. We saw the President, the Chief Justice, the Speaker of the House, and we know that Vice President Rockefeller was there. In their presence there was physically manifested the separation of powers, one of the fundamental principles of American liberty. There was also manifested bicameralism, the Vice President representing the Senate. In attendance on the portico of the National Archives were representatives of the states and the localities, manifesting as it were, incarnating federalism and localism, two powerful principles in our system. And also in attendance were many representatives of religious, labor, business and professional groups, the principle of private, voluntary association. And to cap it all this assembling physically and symbolically of the elements of our political system, to cap it all it took place in front of the Declaration and the Constitution, the two, linked documents that are at the foundation of the American political system. And I think in that ceremony, therefore, was manifested the continuing character of the American political system.

LEHRER: As you say; there was not a lot of, and should not have been a lot of serious discussion during the bicentennial year about what it all meant and all that sort of thing, and it doesn`t upset you. But there are a lot of questions that come to mind as a result of this ceremony as you just explained it. For instance, the Constitution was a document that was written basically for three million people, most of whom were from a rural background. Why is it that that document still works today? What is the unique character of it that makes it still work?

DIAMOND: In a way that I think is at the very center of the bicentennial. The question of the continued utility, the continued health of this 200 year old set of political institutions, those devised in the founding decade from 1776 through the Constitution. You say it was a Constitution framed for a tiny country the Atlantic seaboard, three million people, all in rural circumstances. Forgive me if I say that`s not quite so. We tend to think that all political things are reflections of the circumstances within which they are created. Not so. The American Constitution was framed not for three million farmers, but for 100 million people in a modern, commercial society. The founding fathers, chief among them, had in mind not serving the needs of the existing society but setting the basis for a continental union of the a highly modern character.

LEHRER: Aren`t you giving those guys an awful lot of credit?

DIAMOND: Only what is their due. That is to say, only what they themselves say in so many words. I can prove it with one, simple quote. In a letter by James Madison in the 1820`s he said, "We have framed a constitution that will probably be still around when there are 196 million people." He was anticipating the enormous population increase that the Constitution had been devised to contain. Theft writings make clear that they were speaking of a nearly continental union and that they were anticipating the growth of commerce and industry and of far larger cities than any they knew. They were creating the future, not reflecting the past, and that`s one of the reasons why their old political system continues to be workable in extraordinarily changed circumstances.

LEHRER: Other nations have tried similar constitutional forms of government, and they haven`t lasted as long as ours. Why? What is the unique character of ours?

DIAMOND: well, in asking the question, you prompt me to say you have to have the courage to face the truth no matter how pleasant it is.

LEHRER: (Laughing) All right.

DIAMOND: One of the greatest difficulties that people have, and the more intellectual the greater the difficulty, is to recognize the possibility that the American republic truly was what Gladstone said, "the most remarkable work ever struck off by the mind of man at one sitting." It was a remarkable achievement. The reason it succeeded, the kinds of reasons Tocqueville the great French commentator gave. We had had a happy, colonial habituation to liberty. We were blessed by good luck. The people who came here were already habituated to liberty and to orderly politics, relatively orderly. Second, the leading framers really were remarkable men, and they wrought intelligently, not too lofty and yet firm, a sensible and shrewd system of government for a decent, political order. So a second reason for the remarkable success is that the fundamental frame of government was well structured. A third reason is they left room within that framework for each decade and for each generation-to do its own thing. You see, the Constitution is constituted, structured, made to stand. It is a framework. They framed a government. That doesn`t mean they settled race policy or foreign policy, or that they settled economic policy. They left that for each generation to do in its own way. But what they did was to work a remarkably-sound, sober, skillful frame of government, and we are the beneficiaries of its two centuries of effective usage.

LEHRER: Is there a tendency at a time like this, during a bicentennial year, during the patriotic euphoria that we all feel, and people who feel on any level, whether intellectual level as you just explained why this thing works, or on a more gut level, just feeling good about the country, that we Americans during this year could become overly smug about what this neat thing is that we have?

DIAMOND: I must say that smug self-satisfaction of a patriotic kind is probably the last danger to worry about in the 1970`s. We`ve had so many years, so many years of self-criticism, of self debunking, of coruscating self-criticism that I must say that I find the idea that we`ll become too smug as a result of this bicentennial year of celebration? I find the idea unpersuasive and un-frightening. But I emphasize to take joy and satisfaction in the extraordinary, singular success of your frame of government is no reason to be smug about ghettos or slums. It`s no reason to be smug about foreign adventures. It`s no reason to be smug about secrecy. There is reason for concern and anxiety on the policy level, doing sensible things to face each days budget of troubles. There is no conflict between saying, "We`ve got a tremendously successful, two century old, still viable frame of government," and be nervous and anxious about what we`ll do with the economy, the cities, foreign policy and all our other policy concerns.

LEHRER: But, do people see that connection?

DIAMOND: Well, I think they see the separation.

LEHRER: The separation between frame and policy?

DIAMOND: Yes. You see, nothing the founding fathers could do could do could make us sensible about war, could make us capable of courage. Nothing they could do could tell us how much to do with taxes or when to do this or that with exports. There was no way they could address themselves to our daily problems. That`s left to our intelligence or our stupidity, our courage or our timidity. But what they did was to set up a frame of government that sifts, that`s rooted in the localities, that has checks capable of protecting our liberties and which continues to supply us a reasonable public debate and reasonable public leadership.

LEHRER: But do you think the average person now -- if we were to go out and do the traditional, man on the street interview, and I`m sure there are a lot of them being done, about "what did the bicentennial mean to you, Mr. America or Ms. America, little M. and Ms. America?" I`m curious as to what kind of answers people would give and what those answers would mean.

DIAMOND: Would you let me switch the question a little?

LEHRER: All right.

DIAMOND: Instead of asking "what did the bicentennial mean to you?" which I think causes people to freeze up or to say it didn`t mean much, or to come out with phony and pompous answers, if we`d ask them, "did you have a good time at any time during the bicentennial; did you go down to the Mall; did you see any of the tall ships; did you watch any of the programs; did you tune in-on any of the things at your local university; did you have a good time?" And I think the answer for most will be, "Yeah, it really was pretty good. I really got a kick out . . ."

LEHRER: But you wouldn`t have to have a bicentennial to do that.

DIAMOND: Well, sure. You can`t have a good time all the time. It takes New Year`s Eve to celebrate New Year`s Eve. It takes a bicentennial to have a celebration. But what you could then do is to say, "Why did you have a good time? What did you feel good about?" And I think you`d begin to get some answers that would be very . . .

LEHRER: Like what? What kind of answers?

DIAMOND: When you come right down to it, we`ve been doing business here for a long time, and we`re still in pretty good fundamental shape. I think that`s the answer. It`s valuable to have people feel that way. You see, there`s a contemporary notion that in order to get good done people have to be miserable, sore, annoyed, frustrated. I`m not at all sure that`s true.

LEHRER: But doesn`t history support that theory? I mean, nothing happened in contemporary problems. Contemporary problems don`t get solved under our system, as perfect or as wonderful as it is until people are screaming and hollering about the problem.

DIAMOND: Well, I don`t know about the screaming and hollering.

LEHRER: Well, figuratively.

DIAMOND: think that it helps to get political problems solved if people know that the fundamental frame of government is not in question. You`re not in the midst of a great crisis, but there is this problem today and that one tomorrow, and as you know, today`s solution will become tomorrow`s problem anyway, it is entirely possible to have a fundamental contentment regarding your basic, political system and be active as the dickens in fighting for this or that specific policy. And the American people do it all the time.

LEHRER: You`re asking a lot of an individual to say. "All right, I`m unemployed and I`m having problems feeding my family, and yet I am content that this system under which I live will eventually take care of my unemployment problem," and that sort of thing. I mean, contentment, are you sure that`s a legitimate word when it relates to this kind of thing?

DIAMOND: I think so. Contentment about the Constitution; contentment about the Declaration`s principles of liberty. And I think a great many of the unemployed -- and I`ve been unemployed from time to time -- would answer that way., I don`t think that`s really fair to say would the seven or eight percent unemployed be the ones to express basic satisfaction with the system. The other 92% count as well.

LEHRER: Sure.

DIAMOND: Also if you think of the implication of what you are saying. I think it`s this. In previous depressions, the Great Depression, there should have been change in the political system because all those unemployed were so unhappy and so discontented. Franklin Roosevelt`s greatest contribution to American public life, according to Norman Thomas, the fine, Socialist leader, his greatest contribution was restoring the faith of the American people in democracy and in American Constitutional democracy. He made those unemployed -- he gave to them the conviction that solutions could be found within the American political framework. That was an immense contribution.

LEHRER: And now we go to a new Administration at the end of this year now, and there has been talk going around that there would be kind of an aura of bicentennial euphoria that would carry any new Administration into 1977. Has it happened, or do you think you`d go back to your point that it was irrelevant in the first place?

DIAMOND: No more should there be pre-bicentennial gloom should there be post-bicentennial euphoria. Just reasonable good cheer and to face each day`s problems as they come along would be sufficient.

LEHRER: I think that`s a very good message on which to leave tonight. Dr. Martin Diamond, thank you very much for being with us tonight, and have a Happy New Year and New Year`s celebration and a happy 1977. Robert MacNeil and I will be back on Monday. I`m Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.