From Constitution to World Cup

From sea to shining sea, this summer, soccer (“football” to most of the world) is the game filling stadiums across the country.  Whether or not soccer is your thing, there’s something heartwarming about seeing the reactions of folks from across the globe enjoying American food for the first time, wearing cowboy hats, and marveling over everything from our stadiums to our indoor air conditioning.  So what do the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the U.S. Constitution have in common?  It turns out, more than you might think.  The Constitution gave us the United States, and our friends from other nations are finding out that our Union is quite the place to pass a good time.

It took some doing to get ourselves these United States.  The Federalist Papers were written in 1787-88 by several of our founding fathers to convince the states to get rid of the Articles of Confederation and adopt a new Constitution in their place.  The Constitution would be a reimagining.  Upon adoption of the Constitution, each state would retain its separate identity but simultaneously would agree to a strengthened national government having new powers to regulate interstate commerce, to tax, to maintain a federal navy, and so forth.  Part of the Papers’ challenge was to rebuke some rhetoric claiming that a national union was not a good look—that instead, states should be grouped into three or four smaller unions or confederacies.

In advocating for what would become known as the “more perfect union” of states, Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 11, argued that a unified nation would protect against other nations “playing” individual states against each other.  He believed that a national union would allow each state to protect its ability to participate as a serious influencer on the stage of international trade and commerce: “Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all trans-atlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!”  In other words, while each state would retain sovereignty to enact its own rules for commerce within that state, a federal system with an ability to create certain laws, regulations, and standards governing interstate and foreign commerce would provide the states with superior bargaining power on the world stage.

That bargaining power has been realized in this year’s world cup.  The United States (along with partners Canada and Mexico) landed the successful 2026 world cup bid because we did so as a nation.  When we look at the energetic crowds of international soccer fans filling U.S. stadiums from Los Angeles, to Houston, to Atlanta, day after day, week after week, it becomes clear that our unified nation has much more to offer the world than any one isolated state by itself could offer.  The opportunities of a host nation of our aggregate size and scope clearly spoke volumes to the world’s premier soccer association.  If Hamilton could see the headers, hot dogs, and “hoorays” filling our American stadiums this summer—which will extend through our nation’s 250th birthday next week—perhaps he’d smile with satisfaction at the fulfillment of his prophetic aspiration that America “with wisdom might make herself the admiration and envy of the world.”