A great interview with AEI’s Yuval Levin ahead of the release of his latest book, American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified our Nation — And Could Again.

Yuval is one of the greatest minds we have working today. He brings a particular mixture of sanity, seriousness, gravitas, level-headedness, and dare-I-call-it normalcy to political discussions. His explanation of what the Constitution does (and, importantly, doesn’t do) threads right into the idea of comfort with contradiction:

Would the system empower the small states or the large ones? It would empower both and leave them ever struggling for balance. Would the president be a glorified clerk or an elevated head of state? He would be both, and therefore neither. The few and the many, the city and the country, freedom and order, equality and excellence, representation and administrative efficiency–to each of these stark choices the Constitution says yes, both. And as a result, it creates a regime, a democratic republic, that as the very term suggests, lives in constant tension with itself, yet is capable of extraordinary feats.

When there are no options we can all agree on, go with the system that results in perpetual argument and compromise.