Casey Burgett, author of We Hold These Truths, reveals how an Uzbek taxi driver’s observation of stagnant democracy mirrors America’s endless political debates—immigration, education, lobbyists—without progress. He argues term limits (backed by 85-90% of Americans) worsen polarization by favoring inexperienced lawmakers over seasoned ones, while campaign finance reform fails to curb influence since lobbyists exploit unequal access, not just cash. Burgett insists systemic change demands grassroots pressure, as voters must shift from passive frustration to active engagement to break the cycle of gridlock and special-interest dominance. [Automatically generated summary]
So, yes, I take a few trips to go work with developing democracies around the world as they consider their constitution.
They like to bring in people from developed democracies and say, hey, where did you all go wrong?
What type of advice would you give?
And I was on one of these trips with some former members of Congress in Uzbekistan.
And my role as a professor at GW and previously before that for Congress itself was to think about political reforms.
Our system has never been perfect.
It will never be perfect, but we're in a unique moment right now where a lot of what we have taken for granted has been taken for granted.
And so I was thinking about ideas about how to propel, move our conversation forward about not only what we can do as a government, but as a society, as a people, even as an economy.
And over in Uzbekistan, I was talking with someone I wasn't supposed to be talking with.
This is a very curated trip where you go meet with dignitaries, you go meet with parliamentarians.
But in between all of those meetings, we were in this kind of secluded van.
And the driver of that van, his name was Pavel.
And it was very clear from the beginning, he was not supposed to talk to us about real life in Uzbekistan.
They were trying to show us the best of their country.
And anyone that was, you know, of the regular people was going to say too much about how life was really challenging for the average Uzbeki citizen.
And finally, finally, finally, I got Pavel to the side.
I was just like, hey, man, tell me what's going on here.
And so we're driving around the streets of Uzbekistan.
He's getting nervous because the handlers are looking at him of like, hey, we told you not to talk to this guy.
And finally, he broke him.
And he ends up just pointing.
He speaks incredible English, by the way.
He points at all of these buildings that look the exact same.
They're apartment buildings.
They're just big boxes.
All of them are painted the same color of beige.
And he's just kind of staring at them.
And he looks at me and says, you are here to help us learn about democracy.
But really, we have been struggling with the same things for generation after generation after generation, just like those buildings over there.
Every one of us, Uzbekis, hate those.
They hate them.
Every generation, every leader promises to knock them down to build something different just to prove we can.
And yet, still they remain.
And so to Pavel, he was telling me in a metaphor that was better in English than I could ever speak, was saying, we debate every generation.
We're promised by our leaders to move on to something new and better and bigger, stronger, but we can't even get past the old things.
And for me, I was sitting there with this book in my mind that hadn't become a book yet of no doubt.
We are having the same conversations over and over about immigration, about education, about lobbyists, about money and politics.
We're having the same fights that my parents did, their parents did.
And to us, those were the buildings on the side of the road in Uzbekistan.
This taxi driver who was never supposed to talk to me in Uzbekistan of all places finally cracked the code on something that I had been working on in at least my brain for a long time and was finally able to put to paper after that.
Pablo asked you, and you quote him in the book, is saying, How can we have any real change when all we do is argue about the same thing over and over and over again?
In your years of thinking about this book and in your 10 months now since publication and traveling around and talking about it, and we've covered a couple of the book festivals that you've appeared at.
Do you think that Americans actually want real change?
Could it be that we prefer the arguments over and over and over again?
You've probably seen the same arguments over and over and over more than anyone in the history of the country.
So yes, some people just like the fight, just like they like clicking online for the drama, the divisiveness.
We all say we hate it, but we can't stop watching it type stuff.
But I'm not interested in those conversations.
Those can exist too.
There are a certain number of us, and I think the vast majority of us do want better, right?
We can disagree about what better is, but me and my job and my work and my writing, my thinking is always about those institutional, that the outcome is a consequence of the process.
And I am a process-oriented person.
And so everything about our process right now is getting us garbage in, garbage out.
So let's fix the process.
We can debate about the policies.
We can debate about what we should do about immigration and climate change.
There's a broad spectrum of ideas, but that's the good part.
But right now, we don't have a process to facilitate those divisions in a way that makes meaningful progress on any of them.
So the book is set up chapter by chapter of the myths that a lot of Americans, including my family members, a lot of my students, a lot of probably viewers out there saying, hey, if we could just do, and then they fill in the do, the X, the blank there with some silver bullet solution, get money out of politics, fix the media.
With that last segment on AI is probably a chapter that will be coming in the second edition here.
But one of the big ones, one of the most common, one of the most broadly bipartisan reform ideas is to institute term limits on members of Congress.
It's about 85%, 90% of Americans agree with it, mostly because it's a simple equation.
Congress sucks.
The members of Congress there are not representative of the American people.
They're not doing their work.
So the only way to get them out of their job, which many of them have proven to stay in for decades, is to limit by constitutional amendment how long they can stay there.
And as much as that logic makes sense, get out the garbage to put in new people and have at least have a shot at it, it has proven over and over and over to exacerbate the very things you're trying to fix.
It will make polarization worse because you're speeding up the number of members who are leaving and being installed by folks elected in non-competitive elections.
It will not help the compromise because again, those people are going to be represented from further and further divisive districts, more partisan districts, where where the incentive structure is not to compromise.
It won't lead to folks just serving like we think of the agrarian age where they come here for their civic duty for a couple of years, then go back to the farm.
That's never been true.
That will never be true.
And so it looks like a very logical silver bullet solution to fix a very common frustration with the American people, but it will actually, if you look at the data, if you look at the common results from places who have term limits, it will exacerbate a lot of the things we think they're going to fix.
Viewers, and there's viewers who have called into this program, and they may not be arguing that it's a cure-all, but they've said, wouldn't it help to get the money out of politics to have some sort of campaign finance reform?
Because politicians get bought and paid and then they're controlled by special interests.
So whether or not it's a cure-all or a silver bullet, wouldn't it help?
And this is where it's really important that the nuance really matters here, that to go from zero to 100, we forget that there's 99 options in between.
So to have all the money in politics, which is basically what we have right now, to have no money in politics.
And so we've had eras where there hasn't been very much legitimate fundraising in our politics.
But that doesn't mean that the money goes away.
It's kind of like sports gambling, right?
That the opportunity exists.
It's just a matter if you make it legal or not, or at least have some guardrails around it.
So if you try to remove money from politics by a constitutional amendment entirely, what you're going to get is just other ways of processing money to the campaigns, to the parties, to the platforms.
But there are a ton, a ton of ideas that we can institute to get away from that influence peddling, which is the second part of your question here.
And so this takes a fundamental understanding of how members of Congress view and use that money, right?
They go and raise money for their campaigns, for their parties to hopefully get elected and get more of their friends elected.
But there's limits on how much you can give as an individual, but there's very few transparency limits on the dark money side of this, which is where all of the money comes in.
And we have no idea where it comes from, in what amounts.
It's not trackable.
So at least we can make some progress on making it accessible, transparent, and who's donating what.
And I think that given the technology of the day, given how creative the internet is at catching people doing wrong, the least we can do is if we have the system we have, which right now would take a constitutional amendment to change, then we can make it the most transparent in the world, that who is giving in what amounts.
And then you track their behavior in terms of members of Congress after they receive those donations.
But something to keep in mind for viewers is that people don't just give their money to folks who don't already agree with them.
They're not using it.
They're not showing up with a bag of cash to persuade them to do something they already weren't going to do.
They do it in support, the same way that the NRA gives to almost exclusively Republicans who already agree with them.
And teachers unions only give exclusively to Democrats who already agree with them.
Now, what that money does provide that is not uniform is access, right?
That if you're a member of Congress and you have to raise a couple million dollars every two years to get re-elected, you're going to answer the call of folks who show up with a $100,000 question.
That access, that unequal access is where the perversion takes place.
They're not bribing them to do something that they wouldn't otherwise do, but it does create an access problem, which I think we have a lot of opportunity and a lot of political will to change.
But the battles are high given the state of the law and the Constitution right now.
Casey Burgett is our guest, and we've got some time with us.
He's with us until the top of the hour at 9 a.m.
So go ahead and start calling in.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
The book, again, is We Hold These Truths, How to Spot the Myths That Are Holding America Back.
Casey Burgitt, a George Washington University professor, formerly of the Congressional Research Institute, studied Congress and governments at the R Street Institute.
You've seen him on the Washington Journal over the years, taking your phone calls.
And viewers may have also seen you, as we noted, at a couple of the book festivals.
You've been on the circuit a little bit over the past summer and fall.
You've been talking about this book for 10 months now.
Has anybody changed your mind on any of these issues that you bring up, whether it's the campaign finance issues or term limits, media dividing us as a country?
Has anybody given you an argument that has changed your mind?
The one that I didn't nail, I'll just be outright honest, that we didn't nail is the media, right?
Given the rise and just full-on partisan cocoon media.
And so the argument of that chapter is that we are surrounded by the media that we want, right?
As much as we want to hate it, as much as we want to say that it's biased, all of that is true.
And yet it is still driven by the same thing that every other media company in every other era and every other basic free and developed country has been.
And that's attention, right?
We live in an attention economy more than we ever have before.
And that we are surrounded, we are given what we like or what we are susceptible to.
If we don't click on things, they will change what they're producing in order to get clicks.
So if you're saying that I don't trust the media, I don't know where to get my news sources, make sure you're checking your own, not only your television channels, but your social media platforms, that this is the most curated environment that we can have.
Now, the hard part is, and the development since the book more and more is that we have transitioned into a media where you don't necessarily have to be a journalist to be influential in a media space.
That you just flip on your phone, you're recording reactions to the news, and then how you report that news is basically the wild west.
It's a free-for-all in a way that it wasn't before.
Where news outlets right now, I mean, the New York Times gets bashed, Wall Street Journal, pick your place of choice, including news channels.
They have journalistic standards that if they don't hold themselves to, they are literally liable legally.
And so that's why there's layers and layers of editing stories that are put out, even if they are called fakes news at these journalistic outlets.
They can't be unless they're going to be sued.
That is less and less true by the day, given the rise of just intrapersonal platforms like Substack, Twitter, the increase of Instagram news outlets.
So there's some updating to be done on a lot of these chapters, but that's the nature of our world and our politics.
You hinted that there's an AI chapter in the next book.
What is the AI chapter?
After, I don't know how much of our previous conversation you were able to listen to, but we just talked for an hour about whether people are optimistic or pessimistic about AI, what it means for them, their job, the country.
I'm optimistic that we'll have plenty of phone calls for you throughout this segment already.
I've received several, including Paul in New York City up first independent line.
Paul, you're on with Casey Burgett.
unidentified
Hey, Casey.
So a couple of things.
First of all, the idea that money is simply buying access and these people already have the views and they're simply supporting that the people have their views, I think is kind of naive.
And I cover this professionally, frankly.
I mean, if you think weapons systems, if you think healthcare reimbursements are already been determined or preconceived by the politicians who are receiving these donations, you know, or any number of other policies, education policy, charter school policy, all these things have already been decided.
And they just simply share the same view.
I can tell you that just isn't the case.
They are definitely affected in terms of how they're going to approach or vote or not vote or procedurally deal with a legislative issue by the lobbyists who are giving them campaign contributions.
And that money does have a direct impact.
It may not be an explicit quid pro quo, but I'm telling you, I think it's naive to think that.
That's number one.
Number two, when it comes to term limits, what I think that is, is a frustration with the fact that people don't believe that they're being adequately being represented.
And so if you think about it, why don't they just vote the guys out?
Well, the reason why they don't vote the guys out is because they don't believe there's an alternative that's going to happen that's going to change.
And so as a result, they're simply saying, let's force them out.
Incidentally, this was actually an issue in ancient Greece.
I won't go into that.
But the point is, this is a common problem.
So yes, there's deniality.
It's very prevalent.
Two, there's a problem with actual representation.
And I think it's important that that really just be addressed, that people don't feel that they can vote for somebody who's going to actually represent their views.
I think we're more saying the same thing than this.
A, it's not the first time I've been called naive.
And I take that in our given politics right now, but I think we're saying more of the same thing.
I'm not saying that every single particular bill is written by the politicians.
I know for a fact, having worked on a lot of them, that they aren't.
They don't know the nuances of this, which leads to a capacity problem.
That Congress doesn't suffer from a shortage of information.
They suffer from a capacity to put all of the information on the table and put the best foot forward based on what the evidence says, to say nothing, you're never going to take politics out of their decision making.
The access that I mentioned in terms of lobbyists' influence and special interest access is to make those conversations for those very, very particular changes.
But what I'm saying and where I think we will agree given your coverage of this is that those lobbyists are not equally, they're not randomly choosing who they're going to to advocate for those particular changes, to put this comma there, to change this tax code policy or provision in this thing, education standards down to this level.
That's where those conversations start.
And we're saying the same thing and that the access is different.
A random citizen or group of citizens are not going to get that access to advocate that, nor are they going to have those particular interest levels in that very minute policy detail that these members and especially their staffers need to write this legislation.
So the access problem is where I think it's not only to get in the door to advocate what they want writ large, but is to actually, as you mentioned and it seems to have covered, to make those very, very specific policy requests.
But again, they're not going to Bernie Sanders the same way they're going to somewhat Rand Paul on the other side.
They're finding folks who are open to those ideals on weapon systems, on climate change policies.
They find their champions.
That's what lobbyists are paid to do and make those very minute details.
Sometimes they're on behalf of corporate interests.
Too often they're on behalf of corporate interests rather than the everyday interests.
But that's the system we have.
And we need more transparency to know who they're meeting with, about what, and what are the outcomes associated with that.
On the term limit side, absolutely.
This has been a common frustration going back to ancient Greece, which is what I learned today from you, Paul.
So this is very, very true.
It's a common frustration of representation.
The people here have gone Washington.
They're not representing my interests.
And now I don't have a deciding vote or a vote that means enough in a lot of our non-competitive elections that's going to change who's there in the first place.
So the obvious answer for everyone is if I can't change it by myself or a bunch of friends, let's at least make it so they turn over on a regular status.
It sounds good in theory, but it had very, very disastrous effects.
And a lot of state governments, many of whom have instituted term limits, saw the repercussions of them kicking out experienced lawmakers from like making the government more powerful, the governor more powerful, making bureaucracies more powerful in the states, making lobbyists going back to that conversation more powerful because they're working with inexperienced legislators.
They have taken off those term limits in multiple states.
We tried them, doesn't work, makes things worse.
Let's take them out.
And the final thing I'll say for a lot of viewers who a lot of conversations I've had on this topic in the preceding 10 months since the book came out.
That just too many people are too old serving in Congress.
We see Mitch McConnell freezing at the camera.
We see Diane Feinstein literally dying in office.
That's a separate conversation from term limits.
At least term limits, they say, will kick out the old people.
That is true.
But it will kick out the young, very effective, very vibrant lawmakers at the same rates as those old folks.
So if you want to try, if age is your problem, let's talk about age limits.
That's a very separate conversation than term limits.
And if you think term limits are doable, then you think definitely age limits are doable by constitutional amendment as well.
So just specifying the conversation to solve the problem you're trying to solve.
It's because I don't have the ABC of like, this is all we need to do to fix it.
Just like I said on the end of the last answer, a huge thing in politics is to solve the problem you're trying to solve.
And parties of both stripes really struggle in having every conversation at once.
And then they promise the world to their voters.
They go in and they recognize there's a lot of obstacles to getting these things done, which by the way is exactly as it should be.
And then their voters who are just promised, again, the world and the stars, they get frustrated saying, you guys are just like everyone else.
You broke all your promises.
You didn't solve everything on day one, which you said you were going to do.
So it takes really all of us.
This is a grassroots movement.
If you don't like the way your member of Congress is representing you, yes, you can be frustrated, but it always, always, always takes friends in politics.
Numbers matter.
And if the beauty of this and something that we need to flip our concentration around is that we think we're unrepresented in Congress.
The beauty is they run for re-election from us rather than the other way around.
They are not entitled to that seat.
They have to get enough votes each and every two years or six years on the Senate side.
If you don't have them, if you want something different, it's going to take someone more than just you.
We often want ourselves to be the determinant vote, the one that makes the difference, which is why you hear a lot of young people, especially in my classroom, say, my vote doesn't matter.
That person's going to win anyway.
And if every one of us thought that, then we're going to always get what we've always gotten.
It always, always takes an investment.
That can be any swath of things from donating, volunteering on a campaign, making phone calls, knocking on doors, or just doing something more civic in your society.
Volunteering at a library, volunteering at a local school or a soup shelter.