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Heather Cox Richardson grades America

250 years on, how’s America doing?

How would you grade America’s first 250 years?

That’s the question I posed to historian and professor Heather Cox Richardson on this week’s episode of America, Actually — and a question I pose to myself.

All grades are subjective, and the rubric of whether America earns a passing grade is one of position and perspective, but the best I could come up with was a B-/C .

The enduring model of multiracial democracy, however fragile it currently is, deserves some credit. So does the long list of American inventions and academic institutions, and the cultural impact of American music, film, and sports. With some demerits for the permanent underclass capitalism requires, injustices here and abroad, and preferring the wrong type of football, a passing grade seemed fair enough.

In our interview, Richardson said that she sees the country as entering a period of enormous change, particularly as President Donald Trump continues to reshape our government to serve his maximalist desires. And since we’re focused on America post-Trump, and our road to that point in these coming elections, I asked how responsive a democracy Richardson feels we truly have — and pushed on the question of the electorate’s commitment to preserving it, considering the results of the 2024 election.

Read on for an excerpt of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show — we write a new founding document for America’s next 250 years, listing out the values that will earn the country an A for the next grading period — so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.

As I was preparing for this, I was reading about how you’ve argued that the country has basically reinvented itself every 80 to 90 years from the founding to the Civil War to the New Deal.

I wondered how you thought about those reinventions. What forces shaped them, and are we in a reinvention period right now?

I’m not sure I’ve ever........

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