How Much Faith Do You Have in the U.S. Political System?

Imagine if you were a foreign leader surveying the political chaos in the United States:

For the first time in history, a party has just fired its own speaker of the House in the middle of a term.

In the Senate, one of the two party leaders, who’s 81 years old, has twice recently frozen in public, unable to speak.

A Supreme Court justice has allowed wealthy political donors to finance a lavish lifestyle for him and his wife (and that same justice’s wife urged officials to overturn the 2020 presidential election result based on lies).

A likely nominee in the upcoming presidential election is facing four criminal trials and regularly speaks in apocalyptic terms about the country’s future.

That nominee is essentially tied in the polls with an 80-year-old president whom many voters worry is too old to serve a second term.

If you were an ally of the U.S., you would have to be worried. If you were an enemy, you would have to be pleased.

That’s how David Leonhardt begins Thursday’s The Morning newsletter.

In a news analysis published this week, Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The Times, writes about how, amid upheaval on Capitol Hill and the undermining of democratic norms, the country’s institutions are under profound stress:

There was a time, not that long ago, when the United States presumed to teach the world how it was done. When it held itself up as a model of a stable, predictable democracy. When it sent idealistic young avatars to distant parts of the globe to impart the American way.

These days, to many watching at home and abroad, the American way no longer seems to offer a case study in effective representative democracy. Instead, it has become an example of disarray and discord, one that rewards extremism, challenges norms and threatens to divide a polarized country even further.

Do you feel that the government in the United States has become an “example of disarray and discord”? Do you think it is no longer a model of effective representative democracy? Or do you think this view is wrong and these fears are overblown, or even unjustified?

How much faith do you have in the U.S. political system?

In a recent essay, Charles Blow writes about how young Americans are particularly frustrated with the current political climate — and that was before the drama on Capitol Hill this week:

A Pew Research Center report released this week called Americans’ views of our politics “dismal.”

That might be too kind a word.

On metric after metric, the report ticked through markers of our persistent pessimism. In 1994, it says, “just 6 percent” of Americans viewed both political parties negatively. That number has now more than quadrupled to 28 percent. The percentage who believe our political system is working “extremely or very well”: just 4 percent.

And on many measures, younger people are the most frustrated, and supportive of disruptive change as a remedy.

Younger voters recognize that our political system is broken, and they have little nostalgia about a less broken time. They have almost no memory of an era when government was less partisan and less gridlocked. Their instincts are to fix the system they’ve inherited, not to wind back the clock to a yesteryear.

According to Pew, among American adults under 30, 70 percent favor having a national popular vote for president, 58 percent favor expansion of the Supreme Court, 44 percent favor expansion of the House of Representatives, and 45 percent favor amending the Constitution to change the way representation in the Senate is apportioned — numbers higher than their older counterparts, particularly those over 50.

But the American political system wasn’t built to make radical change easy. Yes, our political system needs a major overhaul, but such an overhaul is almost inconceivable given current political constraints.

This can be a bracing reality when youthful idealism crashes into it.

Students, read these articles, then tell us:

• Do you agree with Mr. Blow that young people view the political system as broken? Why or why not? If you agree, what seems “broken” about it to you?

• Is there anything in the news that specifically worries you? If so, what and why?

• The Times and other news sources regularly report on the deep political divisions among us. Do you see those divisions playing out in your own life? How much do they concern you?

• According to the Pew Research Center, 28 percent of Americans view both major political parties negatively. Where do you stand? Do you ally yourself with one party or the other?

• Do you have faith in American democracy in general? Do you believe that our system of representative government works as it should? Why, or why not?

• America has been through other periods of deep division, as Mr. Baker outlines, including the civil rights era, Vietnam and the Civil War. But what is different now, he writes, is that “Republicans under Mr. Trump have directly attacked the foundation of the democratic system by refusing to accept an election that they lost and by tolerating, if not encouraging, political violence, most notably the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.” Do you think our democracy is under more pressure — or a different kind of pressure — than in the past? Can it withstand today’s challenges?

• Can people your age strengthen our democracy? How? What examples of positive change do you see around you, if any?

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.