Chuck Todd

What say you?

Should we work harder not to forget its accomplishments as well as its failures?

Look, it's a fair critique that I haven't delved into it, and I think it's a reminder that

It is why, you know, I think I've shared with you before, one of my favorite founding father scholars is, her name's Lindsay Shervinsky over at, she runs the George Washington Library at Mount Vernon here in Virginia.

And when I've always asked her this question, you know, how would the founders, you know, what would they say today, you know, coming back on the Constitution, what would surprise them?

And one of the first things she says is, well, it would surprise them that this Constitution is still intact, right?

That the lesson they took away from the failure of the Articles of Confederation was that, you know, hey, if this Constitution can last 25 years, that's a success, right?

So number one, I think you are spot on that there are so many echoes, both to the Reconstruction era and the 20s.

And I think trying to not repeat the mistakes of Reconstruction, but also to recognize like we, I think we appropriately lionized Teddy Roosevelt, because he was someone who came in and said,

that there was, you know, and by the way, other countries have rewritten their constitutions, have had different constitutions over the years.

The fact that we've had the same one for as long as we have is actually quite impressive.

I'm not going to burn the institutions down, but I'm not going to praise them as being perfect either.

But no, I think, look, there's still lessons from the Articles of Confederation, right?

This goes to how strong of a republic did we want to be, right?

We have to make some significant structural reforms to fix this.

How strong of a federal government, of a centralized government do we want to be?

And it's the whole trust busting era.

And I think the importance of, and you're right, why, you know, I've,

I think that arguably is what set us up for such a booming century.

While we can't forget on the Articles of Confederation, the importance of its existence in our history is that it's a reminder that we've always had this tension between rights of the states and rights of the central government.