Project Impetus
We have reached a fraught and unique moment in American history, a moment in which people routinely ask whether democracy itself is endangered. Conservative thinker Robert Kagan recently argued in The Washington Post that the United States was “already in a constitutional crisis” in which the “destruction of democracy” was an imminent possibility.
How do we avert this looming disaster and move America in the direction of a better, more representative democracy?
The Renewing American Democracy project is a nonpartisan initiative dedicated to engaging and elevating the voices of people often left out of the national conversation about one of the most pressing issues of our time. It aims to get beyond the grievance and gridlock that are rife, and spur dialogue that could have a positive and demonstrable impact on all aspects of society today and for many years to come.
We are facilitating and promoting civic engagement through a variety of programs including listening events with and for young people, a national essay contest, polling, and a series of convenings to highlight the problems and generate new thinking on solutions.
The Renewing American Democracy project will help shape the debate over where our country is and should be headed as we confront some of the most daunting challenges a democracy can face.
“The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial. But about these things there should be no doubt.”
— Robert Kagan, The Washington Post
“In no other comparably developed society is voting as difficult; in no peer society are votes weighted as unequally; in no peer society is there a legislative chamber where 41 percent of the lawmakers can routinely outvote 59 percent, as happens in the U.S. Senate…. James Madison and his colleagues believed that by deviating from theoretical majority-rules principles, the American republic would benefit from more stability, a better protection of rights, and generally a higher quality of person in positions of authority. But ironically, it is precisely where minority rule bites deepest that this promise is revealed to be most false.”
— David Frum, The Atlantic