Former U.S. attorney general: If we want real policy solutions, we need to be more civil

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder gave a lecture at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law Tuesday on civility and its impact on public institutions.

Holder served in government for more than three decades and was the third-longest-serving attorney general in U.S. history, holding that office from 2009 to 2015 under former President Barack Obama.

Recently, he led a team of lawyers through a vice-presidential vetting process for the Harris campaign.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Click on the audio player above to hear the interview.

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A lot of people hear civility and they think it’s just politeness. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?

Yeah, I think it’s the way in which, certainly in the political sphere, we interact with one another, where people respect each other, where people hear the other side out and then try to come to some common understanding. But without all of the hate and the tough language that we seem to use almost on an everyday basis.

When civility erodes, what happens to our institutions?

Well, you know, our institutions are negatively impacted. Our society, I think, is negatively impacted when people retreat to their corners and then just hurl epithets at one another.

But I think people need to understand, also, this is a loud nation. It’s not as if the lack of civility is something that has only happened in the last couple of years. I mean, you see that throughout our history.

But when the lack of civility gets in the way of policy progress — that’s when I think it really becomes a problem.

You say, historically, we’ve had that. I’m thinking of what I know about the election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. I understand there was a lot of mudslinging there, and politics today is a world of opposition research and sharp elbows. Does it inevitably lead to incivility?

No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s inevitable. You can oppose somebody on a policy basis without necessarily questioning their integrity — unless there is a basis to question. But too often, I think that’s almost a default position that we see by too many people.

How has the spread of misinformation affected our ability to actually have dialogue around things that are true?

Yeah, it has a negative impact on our ability to have, you know, meaningful fact-filled conversations that lead to good policy.

You know, when JD Vance says that people who are migrants here legally are eating dogs, eating cats — well, that's an issue that we then spend a huge amount of time on, where we could have used that time to talk about solutions to the issues that people, legally in this country, are facing.

That’s a result of the use of that kind of false language.

In the end, does civility need to be modeled by leadership to flourish?

Yeah, the people who lead this nation set the tone for the nation.

That’s why I think it’s really important, as we assess who do we want to lead the nation, who do we want to be the next president of the United States, to take into account the language that they use, the way in which they describe their opponents. Are they putting people down as opposed to advancing the causes for which they stand?

All those kinds of things, I think, can go into making determinations about who should lead us. And then hopefully, through that process, we end up with leaders who will be civil.