Powerlessness and Populism
Politics is a contest about leadership and general values. Is government good or bad? Policy debate engages a much smaller group of experts and interest groups, and is usually incremental.
Almost no one talks about system failure. That’s too hard to fix, at least within the confines of the Washington establishment. But history shows that meaningful change is usually the result of system failure and dramatic overhaul—the Progressive era, abandoning laissez faire; the New Deal, introducing social safety nets; the 1960s rights revolution, overturning norms of discrimination and unsafe practices. “Punctuated equilibrium” is the name political scientists give these tectonic shifts.
America is overdue. Wild swings of populism and extremism are symptoms of a culture that has lost its keel. Who is looking at the root causes of alienation? People who feel powerless gravitate towards populist candidates. Why can’t government fix failing schools, or issue permits for new transmission lines? Here as well, the common theme is powerlessness—no official, no school principal, has the authority to make things work sensibly.
America’s post-1960s governing system is wired to prevent human mistakes—150 million words of binding federal law and regulation, plus legal power for almost anyone to claim their rights were violated. The unintended effect is to prevent human success. New leaders have no authority to make things work. Human agency everywhere is smothered. Life in a free society is like being attacked by a swarm of legal bees. Is your paperwork in order? Are you up to date with your anti-harassment training?
Americans hate this system. But neither political party offers a different vision. They feed off the fear and polarization. Autocrats in China, Russia, and Iran lean back and laugh at the self-destruction of American culture.
It’s time to broaden public debate to include the need for system overhaul. In a short book that will be published next month, Everyday Freedom, Philip Howard argues that the overhaul needed requires not a change in policy goals, but a re-empowerment of human responsibility on the spot. Americans at all levels of society—from the White House to the schoolhouse to your house—must be re-empowered to make sense of daily choices.
As you’ll see from the press release, some leading thinkers agree with Philip. The first review, from economist Tyler Cowen, says Everyday Freedom “is very much a book that needed to be written,” and is “one of the books that comes closest to diagnosing what is wrong with our country.” We hope you will read the book when it is published, and, in the meantime, start looking at headlines through the lens of who can do anything about it.