Jennifer Brady, a centrist Democrat and former English professor at Rhodes College, can’t reconcile two things: her strong admiration for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett – one of the top two students she had in 36 years of teaching – and her deep concern about Senate Republicans pushing through her nomination so late in an election year.

“Had the Republicans not cynically blocked [President Barack Obama’s 2016] Merrick Garland nomination, I think hers would have been unproblematic,” says Professor Brady. “Amy is a self-professed Scalia protégé, but without his abrasiveness.”

Indeed, Judge Barrett shares the originalist judicial philosophy exemplified by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but approaches her work with a far more collegial demeanor than her famously irascible former boss. Former colleagues and legal experts say that could enable her to build greater consensus among fellow justices, meaning that if the Senate confirms her nomination, she may deliver not only an extra vote but stronger conservative rulings.

That combination will be “scary for liberals,” posited Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, who clerked with Judge Barrett and endorsed her in a recent op-ed despite largely disagreeing with her judicial philosophy.  

At confirmation hearings this week before a socially distanced Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic senators are casting President Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour nomination of Judge Barrett as an attempt to circumvent the will of the people and ram through a nominee who will support conservative policy goals that the Republican Party has been unable to achieve from Congress or the White House.

Chief among those is striking down the Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court is set to review beginning Nov. 10. Democrats are also particularly concerned that Judge Barrett would support overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark case enshrining a woman’s right to abortion. An additional disclosure Judge Barrett provided to the committee Oct. 9 includes a copy of an ad she and other members of Notre Dame’s University Faculty for Life group signed calling for “the unborn to be protected in law and welcomed in life”. 

Susan Walsh/Reuters

U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett speaks during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington Oct. 13, 2020.

“By replacing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with someone who will undo her legacy, President Trump is attempting to roll back Americans’ rights for decades to come,” said California Sen. Kamala Harris, a member of the Judiciary Committee and Joe Biden’s running mate. “Every American must understand that with this nomination, equal justice under law is at stake.” 

“Everyone wanted to talk to Amy”

Judge Barrett, a devout Roman Catholic who graduated at the top of her class from the University of Notre Dame law school, got her professional start as a clerk for Judge Laurence Silberman, a circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.

Judge Silberman took her and other clerks under his wing, mentoring them over the bad cafeteria food at the Department of Labor, where he had formerly worked. Her position there opened the way for her to clerk for Justice Scalia, a lion of conservative jurisprudence. He became both reviled and beloved as a leading voice for originalism and textualism, which hold that the Constitution and statutory law should be interpreted according to their publicly understood meaning at the time of passage.

The young Ms. Barrett embraced her mentor’s judicial philosophy. Yet her views were frequently sought by her fellow clerks, including those working for liberal justices who saw the Constitution as a living document that should be interpreted according to the times.

Traci Lovitt, a fellow clerk during that 1998 term, says Ms. Barrett was very good at distilling the key legal principles at the heart of a case.

“No matter what their legal philosophy was – everyone wanted to talk to Amy,” says Ms. Lovitt, now a partner with Jones Day who recalls clerks congregating around her at the long lunch tables in the Supreme Court where they would all eat together most days.

One reason for that, she adds, was that Ms. Barrett was approachable and kind – a trait not necessarily shared by all in the ultra-competitive group of several dozen top law school grads. “She would want to hear everybody’s views, talk through the critical issues, and was very respectful of everyone’s opinion,” says Ms. Lovitt, who worked for Sandra Day O’Connor and saw some cases differently than Ms. Barrett, her jogging partner. “Even if you disagreed with her, you walked away still respectful of Amy.”

By the end of the year, their jogs down the Washington Mall came to include female clerks for five different justices, including liberal Stephen Breyer.

After a stint in private practice, Ms. Barrett was recruited to teach at her alma mater. Only 30 at the time, she donned glasses to look more “imposing.” But she quickly gained respect, earning the school’s professor of the year award three times.

As she and her husband, fellow lawyer Jesse Barrett, started a family, she would keep a basket of toys in her office. With two children adopted from Haiti and five biological ones, including a son diagnosed with Down syndrome, her ability to juggle family and professional responsibilities – as well as volunteer for everything from carpooling to classroom mom to mock trial coach – has drawn a mixture of awe and disbelief. (One key help: Mr. Barrett’s aunt has pitched in on child care for more than 15 years.)

The Barretts are also reportedly members of People of Praise, a charismatic group that is ecumenical but largely comprised of Catholics. Members make a lifelong covenant to their fellow worshippers and to God, raising questions for some about whether that commitment would affect Judge Barrett’s impartiality on the bench. And even fellow Catholics have raised questions about appointing a sixth Catholic judge to a nine-justice court in a country where Catholics make up about 20% of the population but play an outsize role in the conservative legal movement. 

In 2019, two years after Judge Barrett was grilled by Democratic senators in her confirmation hearing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, she said in a talk hosted by Hillsdale College that questions about faith have no place in the confirmation process, citing the Constitution’s ban on religious tests for public officers. While the public should be “absolutely concerned” about whether a judge would be able to set aside personal preferences – be they moral, political, or religious – she added, it would be wrong to imply that “people of faith would have a uniquely difficult time separating out their moral commitments from their obligation to apply the law.”

The example of John Adams

In that same Hillsdale speech, she anchored her views about the duty of a judge in the example of John Adams, an ardent critic of British rule who nevertheless agreed to defend eight British soldiers accused of murder in the 1770 Boston Massacre when no one else would take the case.

“Facts are stubborn things,” Adams said during the trial, “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

All eight soldiers were acquitted of murder, with two declared guilty of manslaughter, a less serious charge. Though Adams couldn’t have felt a lot of sympathy for the soldiers, she noted, he believed it was vital that they receive a fair trial. That lesson, she added, holds particular resonance for a judge.

“A judge is obligated to apply the law as it is and not as she wishes it would be,” said Judge Barrett, who echoed the point in her opening statement this week. “She is obliged to follow the law, even when her personal preferences cut the other way, or when she will experience great public criticism for doing so.”

Colleagues and former students praise her ability to bring out the best legal arguments on both sides of a question – a skill she has said she developed by going toe-to-toe with Justice Scalia as he prepared for oral arguments.

“In faculty meetings, she was never one to be polarizing – she was always the one who took people’s opinion seriously, regardless of where they came from,” says Nicole Stelle Garnett, a Notre Dame law professor and friend of Judge Barrett since they were clerks together on the Supreme Court in 1998. “I think that’s what you see in her opinions, I think that’s what you see of her as a teacher and colleague, I think that’s what you’ll see of her as a justice.”

Chase Giacomo, a combat veteran who took a class from her in his first year of law school before transferring to Harvard, said she reminded him of his West Point professors, who put serving the country above ideology.

“She worked very diligently to never infuse the classroom with her personal views,” he says. “I think she was so purposeful in not doing that, because she wanted us to understand that justice doesn’t serve a party, justice doesn’t serve a race, justice doesn’t serve a religion – justice is for everyone.”

But Senate Democrats are deeply concerned that the appointment of a Scalia protégé would undermine the rights accorded to women, minorities, and the LGBTQ community through decades of court battles.

Refused to answer questions

At the Sept. 26 Rose Garden ceremony when President Trump introduced Judge Barrett as his nominee, she said that “[Justice Scalia’s] judicial philosophy is mine, too.”

“I don’t think we’ve always had that much candor,” says Richard Garnett, a professor of law and political science at Notre Dame University in Indiana and husband of Nicole. “I think people have a pretty good touchstone for starting to approach how she would deal with both statutory and constitutional questions.”

But in her hearing today, Judge Barrett refused to answer questions about whether she would rule the same way her mentor had, including on hot-button issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and the Affordable Care Act.

“If I were confirmed, you would be getting Justice Barrett, not Justice Scalia,” she told California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s ranking member. “I don’t think that anybody should assume that just because Justice Scalia decided a decision a certain way that I would, too.”

Citing rules governing sitting judges such as herself, as well as Justice Ginsberg’s maxim for confirmation hearings – “no hints, no forecasts, no previews” – she declined to answer questions on how she would rule in particular cases.

Senator Feinstein expressed disappointment that Judge Barrett would not distance herself from Justice Scalia’s position on the “hard-won freedoms and protections for the LGBTQ community,” calling it a fundamental point for many Americans.

“What I was hoping you would say is that this would be a point of difference where those freedoms would be respected,” said Senator Feinstein. “You have not said that.”

Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware and others also questioned her over a 2017 scholarly article in which she wrote that in a landmark case on the Affordable Care Act, NFIB v. Sebelius, Chief Justice John Roberts had pushed the ACA “beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.”

With another ACA case on the court’s docket next month, Senator Coons expressed concern Judge Barrett saw the statute as unconstitutional and, if confirmed according to the GOP timetable, she would vote to strike it down. She responded that she holds no hostility toward the ACA, and noted that the November case involves a different legal principle.

Both sides in the polarized debate have accused one another of seeking to use the Supreme Court to circumvent the slower process of legislative change, in which lawmakers are directly accountable to voters.

“Republicans are trying to see policy outcomes through the court that they’re not winning through the political process,” says Jeremy Parris, former chief counsel for nominations in the Judiciary Committee and a longtime senior aide to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, a member of the committee.

Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, argued that Democrats were projecting onto Judge Barrett what they want justices to be: activists for the moral imperatives they believe in.

On the eve of the last presidential election, when Justice Scalia’s seat was open and Senate Republicans were standing firm in their refusal to hold confirmation hearings for Judge Garland, then-Professor Barrett was asked what she thought of Hillary Clinton’s desire for a justice who would protect minority rights and Donald Trump’s declaration that he would appoint judges opposed to abortion.

“Those kinds of answers are, I think, what’s wrong with our nomination process,” said Ms. Barrett, of candidates signaling to the electorate that they would appoint justices who share their policy preferences. “That’s not the right qualification for a justice. We shouldn’t be putting people on the court that share our policy preferences; we should be putting people on the court that want to apply the Constitution.”

As for Professor Brady, her college English teacher, the outcome of the hearings will be “painful” either way.

“I’m totally of a different [political] persuasion and I absolutely admire her,” she says. “And those things are not resolvable for me really.”

Staff writer Francine Kiefer contributed to this report.

“Excuse me if I pinch myself a little bit,” said rookie Democratic candidate Jaime Harrison, pausing in his first debate with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham earlier this month. “I’m the son of a teen mom, I was raised by grandparents with a fourth-grade and an eighth-grade education. I went to Yale – the first in my family [to attend college] … and now I’m a candidate for the United States Senate.”  

Mr. Harrison isn’t the only one pinching himself.

The 44-year-old African American has pulled even in some polls with Senator Graham, a GOP titan who has won his last five reelections by double-digits. Mr. Harrison is now in striking distance of what could be the Democrats’ biggest Senate upset in years. And he has not only outraised his opponent, but set a record for the biggest quarterly haul of any Senate candidate in history, pulling in $57 million from July to September. Much of that came from out of state in a race that has taken on national implications, as Republicans cling to a narrow three-seat majority in the Senate.

Like other Democrats who have sought to crack the GOP’s dominance in the South, Mr. Harrison pitches bringing hope to Black and white voters alike, promising to tackle challenges that cut across partisan lines. He has the added credibility of roots in a South Carolina town of 13,000, where he experienced such challenges firsthand, yet developed the vision to see potential where others might see only economic blight and persistent racial inequity.

“We are speaking to those values, that shared experience, and letting folks know that we see them, hear them, and feel the pain and hardships that they have,” Mr. Harrison told the Monitor. “What I want to do in the Senate is make sure that I can help build and revitalize those communities.”   

But Senator Graham argues that the money pouring into Mr. Harrison’s coffers has more to do with national calculations than a compelling biography. After all, the Republican senator is also an American success story – the son of pool hall owners, the first in his family to go to college, and now the powerful head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which could usher in a solid conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

“This is not about Mr. Harrison. This is about liberals hating my guts because I stood up for [Judge Brett] Kavanaugh when they tried to destroy his life. This is about me helping Donald Trump,” said Senator Graham in his first debate, portraying himself as a bulwark against a progressive takeover of American institutions. “This election is about taking me out because I stand in their way.”

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed its rating of the race to “toss-up” on Oct. 7. Part of that may be due to inroads Mr. Harrison has made with independent voters, among whom he holds a 15-point advantage, according to a Sept. 30 Quinnipiac poll. A Morning Consult poll released today, though, has Senator Graham ahead by 6 percentage points.

Mr. Harrison’s prodigious national fundraising is “the secret sauce that’s allowing him to break through where other Democrats have not,” says Republican strategist Matt Moore, who forged a cross-partisan friendship with Mr. Harrison when they served as state chairs of their respective parties from 2013 to 2017.

Regardless of whether he wins or loses, Mr. Harrison’s call to build a New South that is “bold, diverse, and inclusive,” embodied in his life and now his campaign, offers a way forward not only for his state, but also a country riven by the worst racial tensions in decades.

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Picnicking at Edisto Memorial Gardens in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Diron Stephens and Valarie Waymer say that Jaime Harrison's unlikely run for the U.S. Senate has put his small hometown in the political spotlight.

Hurdling obstacles, getting to prominence

At first glance, Orangeburg may seem the unlikeliest of places to produce Lindsey Graham’s first real Democratic challenger since he was elected to Congress a quarter century ago. Once home to cotton plantations, it experienced one of the bloodiest incidents of the civil rights era – the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre, when state police opened fire on Black college students challenging a bowling alley whites-only policy, killing three and injuring 27 others.

Racism, segregation, and poverty persist. Mr. Harrison lived in a trailer as a kid, and recalls scrounging for change to buy gas and eating cereal with water because his grandparents couldn’t afford milk. Yet amid those circumstances, he showed promise from an early age. He first made the local news at age 5 when he won a drawing competition with a sketch of an old grist mill.

“From there, he took off,” says his mother, Patricia Stewart, in a phone interview. “He was just different. He would play, but wouldn’t play too much before he had to go back inside and read his books.” He loved comic books like Superman – and also deciphered his grandparents’ bills for them.

Mr. Harrison’s voracious reading helped earn him a Yale scholarship. There, he quickly developed a diverse set of friends, including freshman roommate David Drewes, a white Long Islander whom he ended up living with all four years. Though Mr. Harrison initially struggled academically – getting a C+ his first semester in one course – he persevered. He was elected president of his residential college and chair of the Yale Black Political Forum.

“It was just obvious to everyone who met him that he was destined for success,” says Mr. Drewes, now a partner at a New York law firm who has stayed in close touch.

“He doesn’t have the same sort of self-doubt that holds some people back,” he adds, attributing that to the love of Mr. Harrison’s grandmother, who hosted Mr. Drewes in Orangeburg one spring break. “He really just believes, ‘Well, I can make a difference – this is what I should do, and I’m going to go for it.’”

Mr. Harrison’s success in the face of significant obstacles – earning a law degree from Georgetown and rising to prominence as a young congressional staffer – earned him respect across the aisle.

“It’s an American story that I think the country needs right now,” says a GOP colleague who worked with him in Congress and asked not to be identified by name. “I’m a Republican telling you that about a Democratic candidate.”

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Some Orangeburg, South Carolina, storefronts, like this one where Senate candidate Jaime Harrison called bingo in his teens, may be boarded up, but Mr. Harrison says he sees hope where others see blight. Next door, for example, a bowling alley is being developed as a local museum.

A genuine uniter

When Kinney Zalesne took a few days away from her job as counsel for then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno to volunteer as a writing tutor with College Summit, she wasn’t expecting it to be such a transformational experience that she would quit her job to work for the nonprofit instead.  

But Jaime Harrison, who was overseeing the four-day workshop to help low-income students apply to college, created an “extraordinary” community among that diverse cross section of America, she says.   

“He brings people together, he deeply respects people, and they feel it in a very genuine way. And it changes them,” says Ms. Zalesne, recalling how he cut through the tension with his “ma’ams” and his grandmother’s red velvet cake, which he loves to bake.

Mr. Harrison has notched a lot of firsts for African Americans – first to be executive director for the House Democratic caucus, floor director for a leader of the House (Democratic whip James Clyburn), and chair of South Carolina’s Democratic Party. But he has still been affected by racism.

In a recent op-ed , he said he’s felt racism his whole life, since listening to his grandmother’s stories of huddling with family while the Ku Klux Klan marched by. While other parents have to wrestle with telling their kids the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus aren’t real, he wrote, he wonders how to explain to his sons that America hasn’t yet lived up to the Declaration of Independence promise of “all men are created equal.” In Congress, often one of the only top staffers of color in crucial policy meetings, he felt the lack of diversity acutely.

With such personal experience and his deep belief in American institutions, Mr. Harrison could help the country navigate its most significant racial reckoning in decades, say those who know him well.

He creates an atmosphere in which people are less cognizant of barriers that might otherwise divide them, says Shana Payne, a close friend who has known Mr. Harrison since college. She calls his approach and character a “balm” that the country needs. 

“We’re at a time in America where I feel like the curtains have been pulled back on a lot of who we are as a country,” says Derek Canty, a former colleague and co-founder of College Summit (now Peer Forward). “And we’re going to need leaders like Jaime to usher us through these times, to healthy times, to being one country, one state.”

Republicans may disagree; they criticized Mr. Harrison’s judgment in hiring two Black staffers who had tweeted offensive sentiments in the past. His campaign disavowed the sentiments, but retained the staffers.

Vision of a New South

South Carolina has one of the most complicated racial legacies in America, given its history (higher slave ownership per household than any other state except Mississippi). In the modern era, the state resisted integration, drawing out desegregation court battles for nearly 50 years.

Now, if Mr. Harrison wins, he’d join Republican Sen. Tim Scott in Washington – making South Carolina the first state whose U.S. senators are both Black. 

Mr. Harrison says there’s far more cross-racial interaction in communities like Orangeburg than in urban areas, as evidenced on a playground here on a recent day. 

“You look around and the world seems so divided,” says Markeisha Burgess, watching her kids play with a gaggle of white kids. “Yet here you walk around and it feels like we’re on the same team.”

Ms. Burgess’ friend Ashley Hart, who grew up listening to stories of the Orangeburg Massacre, says she has also come to see that her “white sisters” have more in common with her than she realized. “That, to me, holds a lot of promise,” says Ms. Hart.

“I think [Mr. Harrison] sees Orangeburg as some sort of future – where he wants to not just help African Americans, but poorer white people, too,” says Professor Stanley Harrold of South Carolina State University, a longtime Orangeburg resident whose wife taught Mr. Harrison in high school. “This is what Jaime is talking about when he talks about a New South, where voting rights are expanded and there is economic progress that benefits more people.”

A message informed by experience

Mr. Harrison, who in his last job as associate chair of the Democratic National Committee was tasked with developing a strategy for winning the South and rural areas, has proposed a Rural Hope Agenda that addresses issues like hospital closures and lack of broadband internet (38% of South Carolinians don’t have it). It proposes giving small businesses access to university expertise, and offers help for the state’s largely white farmers.

But Mr. Harrison’s journey toward a hoped-for victory, predicated in part on mobilizing the state’s 400,000 unregistered people of color, is arduous. JC Duncan, a Black 50-something resident, says he has never voted: “I take what God gives me.”

A white Orangeburg resident working on his yard, who did not give his name, says Mr. Harrison’s lobbying background is a deal-breaker. “Lindsey [Graham] has his issues, too, but I have only two words to say about Harrison: Podesta Group. Nuh-uh. No way.”  

The Graham campaign has attacked Mr. Harrison’s connection with the now-defunct firm, claiming he “made millions of dollars lobbying for clients that foreclosed on hurricane victims, were fined for Medicaid fraud, and were suspended by the government for misleading their customers.” Mr. Harrison has countered that he needed high-paying work to pay down his $160,000 in student debt and a mortgage for his grandmother, whom he vowed to save from foreclosure after going through the humiliating experience with her as a kid. He also argues that his lobbying had a positive effect, including benefits to the port of Charleston and the University of South Carolina.

The way Mr. Harrison brings any political issue back to helping South Carolinians gives him traction beyond the Democratic base, including within a National Guard unit run by Lt. Col. Clay Middleton, a close friend.

“Some soldiers, I know their political persuasion, but some of them are saying, ‘Hey, I want to ask you a question, sir, about this Senate race. You know Jaime Harrison?’” says Colonel Middleton. “That interest from them is unbelievable. And that’s because of his message.”

Having a weekend picnic at Orangeburg’s Edisto Memorial Gardens, not far from the grist mill that propelled young Jaime into the local news, Dorin Stephens says he has no doubt Mr. Harrison will win. “And we can see where it all started, right here in Orangeburg,” says Mr. Stephens.

Mr. Moore, the former South Carolina GOP chair who also served as state director for Senator Scott, says the dramatic change South Carolina’s economy has undergone in the past 30 years, along with shifting demographics in the suburbs, has opened the way for candidates with compelling biographies.

But David Woodard, a retired political science professor who ran Clemson University’s polling for 20 years, is skeptical of the polls. When voters actually mark their ballots, he says, there’s an unusual loyalty to incumbents born of necessity: Southern states survived in Congress after the civil war by reelecting their representatives until they gained control of key committees.

“I just don’t understand how Lindsey Graham can lose this race,” says Mr. Woodard, a Republican consultant who helped him win his first congressional race in 1994. “It would be an upset of Titanic proportions.”

Ahn Young-joon/AP

People wearing face masks to help protect against the spread of the coronavirus cross a road in Seoul, South Korea. South Korea is one of the Asian democracies to have managed the pandemic successfully.

It’s been a formidable, worldwide stress test. And the COVID-19 pandemic is placing particular strain on a model of government long seen as uniquely able to combine individual freedom and economic advancement: Western liberal democracy.

With case numbers surging again in the United States and Europe, a variety of voices are calling for major changes in that model once the pandemic comes under control. They’re posing a longer-term question: whether Western democracies’ stress test will also prove to be a wake-up call – a catalyst not just for specific policy adjustments, but for fundamental reform.

The problems have been building for some years: a growing gap between haves and have-nots, aging infrastructure, uneven public-health provision, and a gnawing erosion of trust in political leaders and institutions. This has all fed the rise of an angry populism, just as the world’s economic center of gravity has begun shifting eastward, toward an increasingly wealthy, assertive, and authoritarian China.

The pandemic has had two dramatic effects in the West. It has spotlighted shortcomings in Western democracies, where death rates have been far higher than in many Asian countries. And the prospect of unprecedented government spending to get Western economies back on their feet has sparked intense debate over future priorities: over how all that money should be spent.  

Some of the arguments for change focus on specific policy choices – on issues such as climate change, urban planning, education, employment, trade, business, and technology.

But potentially more important is the underlying tone of the debate: the sense that Western democracies need to do more than just tinker around the edges, but find new vitality, purpose, and connections with their citizens.  

Can they summon the kind of resilience and reinvention they’ve drawn on in earlier crises: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal response to the depression of the 1930s, for instance; or the revival of Western Europe as an increasingly integrated family of social democracies from the ruins of World War II?

Among the growing number of books that have been appearing on the political lessons of the pandemic, one, in particular, has now tackled that core question head-on.

It’s called, aptly, “The Wake-Up Call.” It is by John Micklethwait, former editor of The Economist newsmagazine, and its current political editor, Adrian Wooldridge.

Edgar Su/Reuters

A teacher in Singapore explains to students new protocols for taking recess breaks and daily temperature checks amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Singapore pays its teachers, and other public servants, better wages than most countries in the region.

They’re not politically neutral. They’re part of what – in less fractious political times – would have been called the center-right. They’re moderate conservatives, an increasingly endangered species in Britain’s Brexit-focused Tory party and a nearly vanished breed in the Donald Trump-era Republican Party in the United States.

But the strength of their book is its analysis of why liberal democracies – especially the two main exemplars, Britain and America – seem to be in such crisis.

They dismiss the lesson China’s leaders have suggested should be drawn from the world’s COVID-19 response: that the Chinese system has proved superior to liberal democracy. They note drily that other authoritarian regimes – Russia, Iran, Venezuela – have not fared so well.

Instead, they home in on a comparison with East Asian democracies like South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, and the island republic of Singapore in Southeast Asia.

Their central point is not that liberal democracy has passed its sell-by date. It’s that the major Western democracies are no longer good at the core business of governing.

In the East Asian democracies and in Singapore, the people who run government, the civil servants, are paid salaries sufficient to attract the best and most committed officials, rather than, as in many Western democracies, a fraction of what they could earn in the private sector. Good schoolteachers are paid far better. The not-so-good teachers are let go.

Infrastructure – not just roads or railways but broadband, software, and other high-tech essentials – is also a far higher priority. The systems used in government departments in the U.S., Britain, and a number of other Western democracies lag miles behind what any private business would accept.

The book does not argue against the welfare state. It does, however, point out that in Western democracies most “welfare” money no longer goes to those genuinely in need. The lion’s share is spent on state pension systems (a good chunk of which goes to recipients with ample retirement funds of their own), tax concessions, and other payouts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

In some Western democracies, the authors argue, elected leaders have simply stopped taking the business of government seriously.

One country where that is clearly not the case is Germany, a big Western democracy that has so far managed the pandemic fairly well. That’s in part because it has a health system with ample testing and tracking capability and hospital facilities, all of which were quickly brought into action.

But for Messrs. Micklethwait and Wooldridge, there’s a deeper explanation – emphasizing elements they see as essential not just to making democratic government work, but to rebuilding a relationship of trust between government and the governed. German Chancellor Angela Merkel “has always known that government matters,” they point out. “Brought up in East Germany, she knows what tyranny means. Trained as a scientist, she knows how to evaluate evidence. … This is a serious woman who is doing serious work.”

While no book could pretend to suggest all the ways in which Western democratic government might be repaired and reinvigorated, this one – backed by myriad other voices expressing their hopes for post-pandemic government – leaves little doubt that addressing the challenge will require serious work as well.

Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times/AP

Police SWAT officers guard firefighters as they respond to a Champs Sports store after protesters looted and set the building on fire on May 31, 2020, in Tampa, Florida. Some state legislators are proposing laws that, they say, would protect citizens against violent protesters.

Peter Capretto is a student of empathy, literally, as a professor at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But in early 2017, when Mr. Capretto became among the first people in the Trump era to be struck by a vehicle at a racial justice protest, the young theologian saw his trust in the good faith of others shaken.

After trying to stop a driver from careering into a crosswalk full of protesters, Mr. Capretto and several others were carried 200 feet on the hood of the truck. Expecting an arrest, Mr. Capretto was stunned when the driver was cleared of wrongdoing, saying he feared for his life.

“I wish that I could placate my own anxiety by telling myself that if we are generous 100% of the time, we will cure all social ills,” he says.

From Whitefish, Montana, to Satellite Beach, Florida, millions of Americans have spilled into the streets to protest for racial equality. But polls also suggest a split, with many Americans – and a majority of Republicans – concerned about the protests.

With some cities seeing violence amid the unrest, a number of state legislators are proposing laws that, they say, would protect citizens against violent protesters. But to critics like Ken Paulson, a First Amendment expert in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, such proposed laws are part of “the demonization of the right to assemble in America.”

Violent protest: The data and perceptions

The Freedom Forum Institute, a First Amendment advocacy group, has tracked at least 40 pieces of legislation aimed at curbing unruly and violent protest. Lawmakers in eight states have attempted to waive civil liability for drivers who drive their vehicles into crowds, claiming self-defense.

Statistics from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project offer insight into the prevalence of violent protests. Between May 26 and Aug. 22, some 2,400 locations in the United States reported peaceful protests; fewer than 220 reported “violent demonstrations,” which include acts targeting people, property, businesses, and “other rioting groups or armed actors,” according to the group.

Jim Bourg/Reuters/File

A woman helps Joseph Culver of Charlottesville, Virginia, light a candle at a vigil for victims of a car that plowed into protesters in Charlottesville, Aug. 12, 2017. The driver, James Alex Fields Jr., told police that he thought protesters were attacking him, but he was sentenced to life in prison plus 419 years.

Yet a significant minority of Americans are worried about violence associated with the protests. Some 42% of respondents to a September Morning Consult poll say most protesters associated with the Black Lives Matter movement are trying to incite violence or destroy property.

To the Freedom Forum Institute, protests are by definition disruptive.

“We have a society designed for change, and that doesn’t happen easily, and sometimes it’s messy,” says Gene Policinski, chief operating officer of the institute in Washington. “But the net result is that the founders had confidence that, if we would talk to each other without the government restraining us, we would arrive at the best possible solution for the greatest number of people. We tamper with that process at our peril.”

Florida’s move

Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took the boldest step yet to curb “disorderly and violent protest.” He announced a bill that would increase penalties for protest violence and property destruction, waive bail for those arrested, enable authorities to charge organizers with racketeering, and waive liability for drivers who claim self-defense when they drive into protests. The bill builds on efforts since 2017 to limit liability for drivers after protesters began blocking interstates.

“These measures are not meant to discourage peaceful assembly or freedom of speech,” says Cody McCloud, Mr. DeSantis’ press secretary, in a statement to the Monitor. “These measures are meant to discourage agitators who use these rights as cover to engage in violence and disrupt Florida’s communities.”

But even raising the possibility of racketeering charges for organizers should a protest get out of control will almost certainly chill speech, says Mr. Policinski of the Freedom Forum. Such laws, he and others note, could have suppressed much of the civil rights movement, which often involved protests on roads, sidewalks, and bridges.

“Who will organize a rally where there’s potential that you could lose your liberty and everything you own” if someone who attends breaks the law? asks Mr. Policinski.

Moreover, the messaging that it’s OK to hit protesters blocking a road if you feel afraid could be “understood by lots of people as encouragement” to commit violence, says David Alan Sklansky, author of “Democracy and the Police.”

“We don’t have a problem in this country of people getting injured because they are too unwilling to drive out of a crowd of protesters,” says Mr. Sklansky, a professor at Stanford Law School. “The problem that we do have is ... incitement of violence against people on opposite sides of political divides. This law is not helpful in that regard.”

A researcher at the University of Chicago has found 104 instances this summer in which cars were used to ram into or move protesters in roadways, according to a report in USA Today. At least 43 of those were found to be malicious, and a total of 39 drivers have been charged.

So far, only a few anti-protest bills have been signed into law, and all are far more modest than the Florida bill. But they come as the country has seen a shift away from support for the protests, according to a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. In June, 54% of Americans approved of the protests. That dropped to 39% by September. White Americans and Republicans spearheaded the shift.

Backlash in Montana

In some cases, measures to rein in protesters have faced a backlash. In Whitefish, complaints about protesters blocking sidewalks led to an ordinance that would increase permitting requirements and limit the use of bullhorns. The ordinance did not fare well in a public hearing.

“Protesting is as American as apple pie,” says Ben Davis, a city councilor who joined the rest of the council in voting down the ordinance. “Yes, there’s a line where your right to free speech infringes on other people’s rights, and that’s the boundary that the government has to make sure is respected. But the government as a whole needs to have a certain amount of deference” toward protesters.

Most communities have acted with that deference, says Mr. Paulson, a former editor-in-chief of USA Today who now directs the Free Speech Center in Murfreesboro. “In the overwhelming majority of America’s communities, the local government has been restrained and thoughtful in their actions,” he says. “Those who want to paint protesters as violent and evil looters ... undermine what is actually working pretty well across America.”

Courts, too, are wrestling with implications.

In Mckesson v. Doe, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling, leaving Black Lives Matter organizer DeRay Mckesson open to liability for the injuries of an officer hit by a rock during a protest. The case is now at the Supreme Court.

Capretto’s view

In Tennessee, Mr. Capretto was asked to testify to a state House committee about a driver protection bill in 2017. The bill died in committee. “It’s like they realized, ‘Dear God, if we pass this, the implications of this are horrifying in a way that we could not rein in,’” he says.

Months later, a car plowed into a group of protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing a woman named Heather Heyer and injuring others. “I thought they were attacking me,” the driver, James Alex Fields Jr., told police. Mr. Fields was sentenced to life in prison plus 419 years.

From Mr. Capretto’s vantage point, “the big sort of very transformative component of this for me was understanding on a far more visceral level how true the claims have been from Black and brown and Indigenous Americans for centuries: that white Americans are not there to protect them.”

He adds, “More and more of these bills have been turning up nationally, and they’re getting more open and aggressive in their language.”

To talk the talk is one thing, the saying goes. But to walk the walk, the way senior citizen advocate Doris Griffin does, in her trademark high heels – for 75 years – is another thing, entirely.

The click of her heels down the hallways of government offices and senior centers is the sound of the upbeat energy that the
octogenarian is known for in her work. And that work for the past three decades, say those who know her, has been important: Much of the support services for older adults in the San Antonio area exists because of her.

“She’s a force of nature. She’s a role model,” says Carol Zernial, executive director of the WellMed Charitable Foundation. “I’m probably not the only one who aspires to be Doris Griffin when I’m her age.” 

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the work she does more urgent than ever, and so while she technically retired four years ago, Ms. Griffin is moving as fast as ever.

“I know what it is to feel isolated and lonely, and that’s what they feel all the time,” says Ms. Griffin. “I found that out during this period."

“You can get real used to sitting around ... and just not doing anything,” she adds. “And then you have no reason to get up, and you have nothing to look forward to.”

Finding purpose

For Ms. Griffin, who bears a slight resemblance to her idol, the peppy, all-American singer-actor of the 1950s and ’60s, Doris Day, the “look” is what gets her out of bed each day: Putting herself together with those heels and perfect clothes and makeup, she says, “is just for me.” 

At a Monitor interview on a mid-September afternoon in the north San Antonio home she shares with her daughter and sister, she was dressed sleekly in a black blouse and pants with the heels she’s been sporting since the age of 15.

“I have seen a lot, experienced a lot,” she continues. “I just encourage them to go to their doctors, encourage them to try to stay active, and you know, not just give up and just sit.”

She has been a live wire since childhood. There were only 15 other houses in Gobblers Knob, the rural Ohio hamlet she grew up in during the Great Depression. But there were lots of children and room to run around.

“We had a creek down here and we had a forest back here. Man, we were just turned loose,” she recalls.

She likes to sing too, and singing was her first love. As a teenager she worked at WLWT, the same Cincinnati radio station where the other Doris began her rise to Hollywood stardom. Ms. Griffin performed with a band on the radio and onstage under the name Dixie West, and recorded one record – a record that thankfully, she says, has been lost to the mists of time.

She liked to have fun, but she says it was her parents who taught her that helping others is more enriching than money or fame.  

Her father, who worked as a maintenance supervisor at General Electric, “never asked his [team] to do anything he wouldn’t do,” she says. “I really learned a lesson from that.”

She didn’t become a star like Doris Day, but before she turned 20 she left Ohio, becoming the globe-trotting wife of a U.S. airman. She joined her husband on postings in the Azores, Germany, the United Kingdom, Libya, and Alaska. Whenever they returned to the United States, Hawaii was always their first choice of posting. 

But instead of white sands and Pacific Ocean breezes, they almost always got the urban sprawl of San Antonio and the now-closed Kelly Air Force Base. After her husband retired from the military in the late 1960s she spent over a decade working for local churches.

Just when Ms. Griffin was planning to take some time off, Jefferson Outreach – a nonprofit that helps older adults in the San Antonio area stay active and feel less isolated – asked her to become its executive director.  

“Everything we did was so that seniors could be independent in their own homes,” she says.

And as she entered her 60s, she adds, “I had a purpose.”

“A way of life”

In 2000, she joined the Texas Silver-Haired Legislature, an advocacy group for Texas seniors at the state level. 

“[Ms. Griffin] pulls her own weight, plus others’,” says Pat Porter, who joined the group that same year. “She’s always worked really hard on [issues like] delivering meals, congregate meals, and housing.”

And in the underfunded arena of senior services, her advocacy efforts have been especially needed.

“The numbers are so small they’re almost a rounding error when you talk about the dollars spent,” says Ms. Zernial.  “What Doris is doing, talking to people at the state level, [is] so that we at least get that.”

In 2002 Ms. Griffin joined a joint city-county commission on elderly affairs, and the commission soon recommended the creation of centers where older adults could meet for meals, access services, and join activities and exercises.

At first the commission wanted four – one in each quadrant of the city. Now there are 10, and one of them is named after Ms. Griffin. 

“She literally helped change the thinking of senior services in Bexar County,” says Ms. Zernial. “She’s a fierce advocate for older persons. ... It’s a way of life for her.”

Ms. Griffin retired from Jefferson Outreach four years ago but is now working as a paid volunteer for WellMed to help San Antonio’s older adults weather the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Together they’re working to encourage older adults to take care of their regular health and chronic conditions. With one initiative they’ve distributed tablets – nicknamed GrandPads – to some people so they can meet virtually with their doctors. They’re also putting on events and television programs aimed at keeping older adults engaged and active. 

“She’s like a spokesperson,” says Ms. Zernial. “And she’s very personable.”

Like most of the country, Ms. Griffin has been getting a crash course in videoconferencing this year. She’s seeing the benefits, however, such as virtual bingo games and exercise sessions. And she’s helping promote them. 

There are already 20 exercise classes set up over Zoom, she explains, miming the exercises in her chair, her heels clacking against the floor with each move. 

“You have to be innovative and try to figure out ... what can I do?” she says. “You either find something, or you’re just lonely and sad, and end up being lonelier and sadder.”

As she approaches her ninth decade, she says she recognizes that she may not have many more years of advocacy left in her. Next year will be her ninth term in the Texas
Silver-Haired Legislature. Walking up and down the halls – and, more importantly, the stairs – of the state Capitol is increasingly challenging, especially in heels.

But, she jokes, the heels are what people will remember her for.

“When we think of the heels we’re also going to think about what she has meant to this community,” says Ms. Zernial.

And for now, Ms. Griffin continues to build her legacy, guided by her parents’ altruistic philosophy: “What do you do with your life? Is it money and fame? What is it? Why are you here? And I think you’re here to serve others,” she says. 

“If you can help in any way, that’s what we’re here for.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that the Texas Silver-Haired Legislature is, for Texas legal purposes, an advocacy group.

Reuters

People walk beneath blossoming trees in New York's Central Park last April following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

There are roughly 300 billion trees in the United States, according to the U.S. Forest Service. The breadth and intensity of wildfires this summer mainly across the Western states – 45,195 fires, 7,928,100 acres burned as of Oct. 8 – provide a stark measure of the increasing impact of climate change.

But there is another, more hopeful effect of climate change recorded in trees: a new vigor in civic engagement and concern for the well-being of communities, especially cities.

Take, for example, the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury. It is more densely inhabited than the Boston-area average. More than 90% of its residents are people of color. It is also one of the poorer and least vegetated areas of the city. More asphalt and fewer trees mean higher temperatures. When the city announced a plan to widen a main thoroughfare through the neighborhood, locals saw it as an act of environmental racism. The blueprints marked 124 mature red oaks and lindens for removal, to be replaced ultimately by 204 new trees. But saplings won’t provide shade for decades. Faced with sustained opposition, the city agreed last month to review and revise the plans – this time with resident input.

Similar discussions are taking place in cities across the U.S. as urban planners, residents, and activists strive to find a balance between population growth and conservation of the natural environment. As of 2018, according to Forest Service data, the total urban forest included 5.5 billion trees providing 127 million acres of leaf area. By 2060 that urban land will increase by nearly 100 million acres, the Forest Service says. Greening those spaces has measurable benefits. The current urban forest produces an estimated $18.3 billion in value through air pollution removal, carbon sequestration, and reduced energy use in buildings.

Trees also contribute to safer neighborhoods. Federal crime statistics show that public housing communities with greater amounts of vegetation and more open landscapes experience less than half the crimes of  their less-planted counterparts.

“One of the things we have found is when we build community around trees, it gives [people] a voice. They’re a little less powerless,” Seattle environmentalist Jim Davis told U.S. News and World Report.

In cultures around the world, the relationship among trees, community, and individual spirituality is a common experience. On any given Sunday morning, countless church congregations gather beneath trees to worship in open urban fields across Africa. In Rwanda and Sierra Leone, community tribunals convened in the shade of trees to find reconciliation between victims and perpetrators of genocide and war crimes. Churches curate many of Ethiopia’s largest remaining mature forests.

As temperatures rise and weather patterns shift, arborists around the world are rethinking how forests will need to adapt. By the end of the century, for example, New England’s forests may need to look more like those currently in mid-Atlantic states. New York City biologists are already planting trees from Arizona. In Massachusetts, which has 60% forest coverage, 80% of that forest is privately owned. That gives town planners and backyard gardeners a primary role in preparing for a changing future.

“We are seeing landowners becoming more aware of climate change impacts and, more importantly, the role their land can play in mitigating climate change,” Paul Catanzaro, a forestry expert at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told The Boston Globe.

Planting a tree has always been an act of selflessness, beauty, and optimism. As the climate changes, humanity is finding new seasons of living in balance.