There’s been a lot of conversation over the past few years about how polarized and divided we are as a country. But William Cooper says the problem isn’t necessarily one side of the political aisle or the other — but rather us.
Cooper is an attorney and columnist; his new book is called "How America Works ... and Why it Doesn’t." The Show spoke with him earlier about this — starting with whether Cooper thinks people in this country, or outside the country for that matter, really understand how and why this country works and why sometimes it doesn’t?
Full conversation
WILLIAM COOPER: I think the first question — do people understand how this country works? Unfortunately, the percentage is dwindling. People are less and less interested in the core functions of how the country works, and that's something I talk about in the first half of the book.
Then the second half of the book, following your question, is do people understand why it's not working? And that's what I focus there.
I think if you talk to people about how the country's not working — and I think a majority of Americans would agree with that — you're going to get a lot of different views. I've got my views, but I think if you ask that question to 10 people, you'd probably get 10 different answers.
MARK BRODIE: On that first question of how America works, is that a matter of needing better civics education? Is there something more that needs to be happening here to get people to really understand how this country functions?
COOPER: You're exactly right. Civics is key, and if you look at the polling — the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School of Communications does an annual poll, and they show data. It's really striking just how little basic knowledge of civics Americans have — questions about the First Amendment, separation of powers, federalism, things like that. The numbers are really striking. You get well below half the country in that poll understanding the basics, and I think that's a real problem.
It doesn't immediately cause huge harm right out of the gate, but over time, as more and more Americans are focusing on other things instead of the workings of the country, I think it can have a really negative impact.
BRODIE: Does it lead to the kind of impact where — maybe it goes to the second part of the question here — why this country doesn't always work the way it should.
COOPER: Exactly, and Donald Trump post-election behavior is a great example of that. In my view, he — after the election — was essentially at war with, perhaps, the most fundamental principle of how America works, which is the peaceful transfer of power.
And yet, despite the fact that there was a violation of that key, essential principle, he's again the Republican nominee, and he's still extremely popular and an extremely potent candidate.
BRODIE: So, you mentioned that you think most people have their own opinions for why this country doesn't always work so well. What are your reasons? What do you think?
COOPER: Well, I think there's three main things that are all working together. It's kind of like a flywheel, and when you combine them, it's causing the sort of dysfunction we're seeing now, which is quite high.
The first element is cognitive bias. We all have that. Human beings all have biases where you believe things in a certain way that support previous views. Confirmation bias, we believe in sweeping narratives that might not be true. We're all susceptible to that. So, that's not unique to one side or the other.
The second factor has also been around for quite a while — that's the structure of our political system. So we've got two huge juggernauts — the Democrats, the Republicans — they're in this big, bitter rivalry with each other, and that breeds more partisanship, more tribalism than if we had a multi-party system. You also have other subsidiary aspects to that, like gerrymandering, closed primaries, but the second element is the political system itself.
And then the third factor is the new factor, the one that came about this century, and that's the new media ecosystem, primarily social media.
So, when you combine a population prone to bias sitting in a political structure set up to increase that bias, and then you have all these people operating in the echo chambers of social media, which exacerbate biases yet still more, you get a lot of irrationality in our politics and a lot of people on both sides of the aisle believing things that aren't true, demonizing the other side and so on.
BRODIE: Well, so what do you do about those things? Because, as you say, we have cognitive bias. The two-party system, there have been attempts to run third parties and have other parties, and they haven't really gone all that far — at least not in the past. And social media doesn't seem like it's going anywhere. So, what do you do about all that?
COOPER: Great question. I wish I had an answer, and my book, admittedly, is more describing the problem than coming up with major solutions, because it is so hard. I do think a really important step in that direction is just recognizing the root cause of what's happening in our country.
BRODIE: Do you get the sense that there was a time when people felt like this country was working well? Or is this something that — in one way or another, for any number of reasons over time — people have always kind of felt this way?
COOPER: There's, of course, always been some amount of angst, some amount of the country thinking things aren't working. We're, of course, always been biased. There's always been partisanship. And one really big question for right now is: is everything a lot worse now, or because of new media are we just aware of things more, right?
Maybe the country hasn't changed much. We're just aware of it because we can see it more. We see the tweets, we see the video on YouTube and so on. In my view, I think things are actually worse, and, to answer your question, I think people did feel better about the country in previous years.
BRODIE: So, understanding that, as you say, your book is more describing the problems than trying to come up with solutions. But I'm wondering, in terms of trying to get a handle on this, how much of the solution do you think comes from politicians — political leaders, people in politics and government — and how much of it comes from us — those of us who are not those people?
COOPER: That's a great question. To me, those two sides of the coin actually are one in many ways. That over time the population — there is a lag — but over time, I think what's happened is growing irrationality in the population is slowly entering government more and more.
BRODIE: That's really interesting, because I wonder if it's easier or more difficult to get the people in politics to change, or if it's easier or harder to get us to change — not just in terms of who we vote for and who we elect to those positions, but also, the hundreds of smaller decisions we make every day that kind of lead to what we're seeing now.
COOPER: Yeah, it's a great question. I think you've honed in on exactly where we should be looking and how we should be thinking about it. Trying to get large groups of people — and, of course, our country's got 350 million people, or something like that — trying to make big moves within the people is hard.
I think, if we're going to focus our efforts on improving things and getting more rationality and sobriety into government, I think identifying the right candidates, pushing them and pushing for them is really important.
You also hope that politicians who are in power can do the right thing when it really comes down to it, but trying to get the right candidates into office and supporting them. I think that's where the focus should be.
BRODIE: All right. That is William Cooper. His newest book is called "How America Works ... and Why it Doesn’t." William, thank you so much for the conversation. I appreciate it.
COOPER: My pleasure. Thank you.
