OUR REPUBLICAN PARTY:

In your 2017 book, Democracy, you describe populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism as the "four horsemen of the apocalypse." Three years later, how do you feel democracies are faring with these four horsemen?

It's not a good story. The COVID-19 crisis, if anything, has tended to reinforce, maybe even exacerbate, some of the trends toward isolationism. You've gotten a response where the sovereign state is king in response to the pandemic. It's my citizens, my borders, my PPE [Personal Protective Equipment]. The international organizations seem to have almost been sidelined during this period of time. The underlying trend toward nativism, take care of my own, seems to be stronger than at any other time in my memory.

The underlying trend toward nativism, take care of my own, seems to be stronger than at any other time in my memory.

By the way, it is quite in contrast to the response to September 11th, or even to the financial crisis of 2008, where there was very much a sense that these were contagions that couldn't be really contained within borders.

We're going to have a lot of hard work to do to rebuild some sense of international cooperation as one of the important elements to responding to crisis once we are through this terrible situation. I understand that impulse, but it's still one that I'm sorry to see.

In a more homogenous country like Hungary, populism is more of a sense of Hungary versus the world. Here in the United States, populism seems to rely more on our internal divisions, on red versus blue, on race, on religion, on native-born versus immigrant. How do we best deal with those tensions that populism has brought out in our own country?

You are very right that the response of a country that's homogenous is around an old-fashioned nationalism: My nation against others. The United States, of course, is this odd creation. To be American is not tied to nationality, religion, or ethnicity. We come from, and our ancestors came from, every corner of the world. You couldn't have a response like you see in Hungary.

But we are having an uncomfortable conversation about how do we define "American"? We divide ourselves into ever smaller groups, each with its own narrative, each with its own grievance, each with its own history. It becomes about whether my grievance or my narrative is superior to yours.

What has been sacrificed is the sense of a common narrative that was not based on our tribe, our ethnicity, our nationality. That common narrative was based on a belief that you could come from humble circumstances and you could do great things. That narrative was without regard to your race, ethnicity, or nationality.

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