2/10/2025

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal focuses on the latest piece at RealClearEducation from Jack Miller Center President Hans Zeiger. In a slimmed down version of his essay in the latest edition of National Affairs, Zeiger notes that Americans’ trust in their political leaders is at a low ebb. As he reports, “A Pew Research Center study from 2023, for example, found that 76% of Americans rate the quality of political candidates as poor.” The problem is a big one: “We are losing faith in our institutions in part because we are losing faith in the people who elected them.” We can get our nation back to electing the kinds of political leaders Americans need, Zeiger writes, by following the example of our nation’s forefathers.

Our nation's first president, George Washington, “identified the categories of intellectual capital” that every political representative of the people should possess: “calm and deliberate attention,” “reason,” “liberality,” “National character,” and “Wisdom, and good examples.” To diffuse these characteristics once again in our political leaders, we can turn to the new civic centers that are cropping up at institutions of higher education throughout America. These include, Zeiger says, centers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Florida, and the University of Texas at Austin. He writes that these places of civic learning are “dedicated to the study of American civics, public leadership, and civil discourse, along with a growing rediscovery of citizen formation.” These goals are, of course, pivotal in a country where it is the responsibility of each generation to pass on the blessings of liberty they received to the next.

“The approaching 250th anniversary of national independence offers a host of opportunities for us to pass along our civic tradition to young Americans,” Zeiger concludes. “Let us seize this opportunity. The future of the country depends on it.”