Which is the party of good government? Democrats like to claim that mantle, but Joe Klein in his new Substack "Sanity Clause" describes how public employee unions are "an issue no Democrat wants to talk about." Klein, former senior columnist at TIME and best-selling author, is clear-eyed about the unholy alliances that make liberal sanctimony so hard to take. Fixing lousy schools and toxic police cultures is impossible as long as public employee unions call the shots.
 
That would seem to leave the path to good government wide open for Republicans. But most R's are content to attack government and don’t have a vision of how to run it better. Maybe conservative thought leaders can help R's fill this vacuum. In this short podcast, Wall Street Journal editorial page head Paul Gigot discusses with Philip Howard the need to take back control of the operating machinery of government.
 
The 2024 election, Joe Klein observes, is likely to focus on culture wars. But a strong majority of voters want “very major reform” of government. What if a party presented a vision for good government? For example: Here’s how public union controls can be replaced by a new deal for teachers and cops—a genuine merit system. Here’s a streamlined mechanism to rebuild aging infrastructure. Here's a way to overhaul legacy bureaucracies and clear out unnecessary red tape.
 
Do you think voters would be attracted to a party that focused on making things work?

• Jace Lington of the Gray Center reviews Not Accountable for The American Conservative, writing: “In just 160 pages, Howard marshals vivid historical examples and cogent legal analysis to make a persuasive case against allowing public sector employees to unionize at any level of government: federal, state, or local.”

• Save the Date: On Wednesday, April 19, Common Good will co-host a morning forum with Columbia University’s Center on Capitalism and Society exploring the role of human agency in public choices. Confirmed panelists include Nobel laureates Edmund Phelps and Paul Romer, historian Roosevelt Montás, infrastructure expert Diana Mendes, political philosopher Yuval Levin, and political scientist Jennifer Murtazashvili. More details here; invitations to follow.