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This seemed like a pretty perfect moment for us to do a show about democracy.
For one thing, we're engaged in this hellaciously difficult and maybe impossible business of helping to create a new democracy in Iraq .
And in a few weeks, from now we switch on ours full-bore, racing in 90 days from the Democratic convention to the Republican convention and then in to November and the Presidential election.
And, of course, it's the 4th of July. This is the date we've always celebrated the creation of America , since it was on that date exactly 228 years ago – it was a Thursday in 1776 -- that we formally declared our independence from Britain .
But independence is not the same thing as democracy. I mean, North Korea is very independent.
No, the day we should actually celebrate the birth of American democracy was 2 weeks ago – the 21st of June… because on June 21st, 1788 , the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It's the Constitution that is the true “operating system” of our democracy.
But whichever you feel more inspired by, the Declaration of Independence …
CLIP: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands…”
…or the Constitution…
CLIP: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…”
….as a writer and a worshipper of language I love the fact that this country is all built on a couple of texts, a bunch of words written and argued and revised by groups of people who didn't agree and didn't necessarily like each other. We don't celebrate a military victory as our founding event or some religious miracle, but human ideas – radical ideas at the time -- expressed in words, committed to paper, distributed far and wide.
The writing of narratives about our democracy, about its profound flaws and amazing endurance, has gone on ever since.
In novels like Henry Adams' Democracy, and films like The Candidate …and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington …
CLIP from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
And in TV shows like The West Wing, we are still compelled by stories of exactly how this democracy shines and sputters along.
My first guest on today's show has starred on The West Wing as the president's National Security Adviser ….
CLIP: ANNA DEAVERE SMITH IN WEST WING
…and as a playwright and stage performer as well most of her work is built around the complicated warp and woof of our democracy.
Anna Deavere Smith brings things to life on stage that we find difficult to talk about: the relationship between Jews and blacks in New York City for instance or the riots in L.A after the Rodney King verdict.
She calls her work a search for the American Character and for much of the last decade, that search has been in politics. In 1996 she interviewed Bill Clinton, George Bush the elder, and their pollsters and strategists who were shaping the election; and then she performed selections from those interviews verbatim, exactly as she heard them.
Anna Deavere Smith is in Studio 360 to perform some of that work. Welcome to the show.
AD: Thanks for having me
KA: So talking to the President of the United States , he at that time was reelected, he must have been on top of the world and feeling fairly cocky…
AD: I don't think that's how I experienced Clinton and one of the things that I say in the book is that I interviewed 500 people there. And I guess I'd have to say that after 500 people still surprisingly the most imaginative language was Clinton 's language which is not what you would think. And that's great that he could escape really get through what's required for political speak and still maintain his own organic music and original way of speaking. I thought it was like listening to Jazz.
KA: and then when you essentially are then interpreting his jazz performance do you imitate the rhythms and the song of his speech?
AD: Well my whole thing goes back to something when I was a little girl my grandfather told me if you say a word often enough it becomes you. I am always looking for authenticity and scholars of rhetoric kind of make fun of me that I would believe that there is anything such as authenticity of the original voice. But that's what I am looking for a person to come into their own real authorship, to tell me something they really want to tell me. And my experience is that as they get close to that they start becoming musical.
KA: Well let's hear a little bit of it.
AD: Political press has this image that the Presidency is so all powerful that none of the presumptions should apply no presumption of innocence no presumptions that some techniques and things are off balance. I think we really have to ask ourselves do we want to put our public officials of in the position of basically having to bankrupt themselves just to survive in office. And I just think it's gotten out of whack.
I think this thing is seriously out of whack. I was so naive that I really believed them when they said if you were honest and forthright it would clear the air. I mean its chilling when you really think about what happened when Hillary's legal uh bills were found oh! It was all over the papers right, she had to go talk to the grand jury. First lady going to the grand jury, big pictures! Now what happened? We said we don't know where they came from but we're glad they turned up because they support her story. Why would we cover up records that support her story? That was down in paragraph ten here. Then what happened? Another totally independent inquiry by a republican law firm, spent three point six million dollars looking at all the documents on the savings and loan, you know what it said? No basis for criminal action no basis for a civil suit the records support Hillary's account!
Did all those people who BLARED the record discovery who BLARED the grand jury testimony all over America bother to tell the American people what a report done by a Republican law firm after they spent almost four million dollars said? No! Little bitty notice made! So what I'm saying is you know, we're fine, we're standing here were showing up for work, we're fine. Bad for America , bad for the system, and it makes good people less willing to run and it corrupts the search for the truth!
KA: That's pretty wonderful. When you are asked the question why do you do this what is the point of this do you have a political idea is it a civics lesson done entertainingly what is your answer?
AD: Well I started this work for a scientific reason, if anybody would ever think an actress was scientific. I wanted to know more about the relationship of language to identity and so I started doing these interviews in a kind of clinical sort of way, and really to teach my students that no body sounds like what they think their characters sound like of a page.
And so my goal has been to learn as much as I can about America by putting myself in the words of a variety of different Americans the way you'd think about putting yourself in somebody's shoes. So that was really what instigated my work. I am quite apart from my work very interested in the health of democracy and I believe that artists have a role to play that many large institutions in our culture have lost the public trust: educators, lawyers, politicians, the media, the credibility in America for leadership is at an all time low.
People still trust artists even though many of us are very foolish. And so I think that in so much as we do have the public trust, we are public trustees and I think we have an opportunity, not to sound didactic or anything, but we have an opportunity to try to learn how to put together everything we know about skill everything we know about enchanting people, enrapturing them, and entertaining them and to put that together with content, because I think that democracy could use it.
KA: Anna Deavere Smith, thank you very much.
AD: Thank you
Anna Deavere Smith is a playwright-actor-and professor. She performed a selection from her play, “House Arrest.” I'm Kurt Andersen and we are talking about the culture of Democracy.
