Why Nothing Works
When I was running for President, many were dubious about government’s ability to solve big problems.
Why can’t we get big things done anymore? There have been a number of thinkers who have tackled this question, including Jen Pahlka (bureaucratic rules), Yoni Appelbaum (zoning laws), and now Marc Dunkelman, whom I interview on the podcast this week.
Marc is a fellow at Brown University and the author of “Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress – and How to Bring it Back.” He spent years on Capitol Hill as a Democratic staffer and then as a researcher at a thinktank.
“We used to be able to do big things, from the power grid to the highways to Social Security to the Tennessee Valley Authority. But over the past several decades, things have changed, as many self-described progressives have become concerned about government overreach in various realms. Today, we have a vetocracy where there are a lot of ways to stop things from happening. We seldom do big things successfully anymore, and voters have noticed.”
Marc makes a series of arguments. First, he defines “Progressivism” as a popular movement that wants government to solve problems.
Progressivism, according to Marc, is defined not by one but by two impulses that are in tension with each other. On one hand, the government needs to become more powerful to solve problems, as embodied by Alexander Hamilton. On the other hand, the government must be kept in check because it does bad things and ignores the people, as argued by Thomas Jefferson. These two impulses have waxed and waned in relation to each other over the last 100 years. The version that has emerged since the 1960s – with the Jeffersonian impulse to keep the state from too much power – has become a fundamental political liability for progressives.
“The average liberal voter might have two top priorities if you asked them: climate change and women’s reproductive rights. The first asks government to do big things. The second asks government to be small and stay out of it. We don’t think anything of these preferences but we should realize that they are very different in their vision of the role of government.”
According to Marc, the failures of government over the years have fueled the rise of Trump, because if the institutions aren’t working the way they’re supposed to, you become responsive to a very different type of leadership.
So what can be done now? “This is in some ways good news, because we can focus on things ourselves. We should give communities a voice but not a veto when we want things to get done. Rendering government incompetent is a lousy way to draw voters into a movement to employ government to solve big problems.” Ain’t that the truth.
For my interview of Marc, click here. For his book, click here. To see what Forward is doing for politics, click here. Maybe we can get things working again.
