Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

One of my all-time favorite editorial cartoons appeared a couple of days after the 2004 Presidential election; it showed a dejected John Kerry standing next to a barn, gazing at what appeared to be a large pile of manure. The caption read: “This could all have been mine!”

As I write this, four years later, Americans are trying decide who to trust with a pile that has grown much, much bigger.

The next President will take office at a time when our most basic institutions are broken. The litany is familiar to all of us: we are bogged down in two wars, one of which we had no business waging. Our enemies are reveling in our troubles; our allies are bewildered by our incompetence. The economy is tanking. We increasingly rely on China to buy our debt, which means that China now owns a substantial portion of America. Our infrastructure is crumbling. We haven’t rebuilt New Orleans, or other places devastated by natural disasters for which we were unprepared. Healthcare is increasingly unaffordable. The checks and balances we learned about in government class are a distant memory, and the U.S. Constitution—the document that has shaped our culture and made us the envy of people around the world—lies in tatters.

It is really hard to believe that so much damage could be done in just eight years. Other administrations have made poor policy choices, been fiscally irresponsible, and elevated people unequal to their tasks.  But none has wreaked this much havoc on the nation.

One result of this wholesale devastation is that Americans have lost confidence in the integrity of our common social and legal institutions—and partially as a result, have become increasingly distrustful of each other. Repairing that trust—in our institutions and our neighbors—may be the biggest challenge we face; in its absence, we can only go so far in solving our collective problems. (The recent bailout negotiations are a case in point.) 

The sobering question that confronts us is whether any President, any Administration, can stem the bleeding and put this nation back on the long and difficult path to competent governance, fiscal sanity and the rule of law.

The realist in me says the prospects are grim. The Pollyanna in me (yes, she’s still there!) says that every challenge is an opportunity, that when you make lemonade, you start with lemons.

With proper leadership, we could use this time as an opportunity to learn from our mistakes and remake our country. We could reach back into our national psyche, and rediscover the sources of our strength and productivity. We could recognize and act upon the truth that it will take all of us working together to reclaim our heritage and mend our broken institutions.

The “usual suspects”—campaign strategists, spin doctors, and talking heads—are busy shilling and selling. This year, we need to ignore them all and ask ourselves one simple question: which candidate is most likely to help Americans make lemonade?

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We have just emerged from an election season during which, in addition to the usual (and bipartisan) charges, smears and indiscriminate insults, we were told that Barack Obama’s policies amounted to “socialism.”

Leaving aside the obvious—that most people engaging in these arguments on both sides used the terms “socialist” and “capitalist” very loosely, raising the question whether they really could define either system accurately—what struck me most about the debate was an unacknowledged premise, the assumption that America must choose between capitalism and socialism. The argument underscored the persistence of what I sometimes refer to as our bipolar political culture. Voters are either right or wrong, other countries are either friend or foe, policymakers and politicians are either sleaze-balls or valiant warriors for civic virtue.

Reality isn’t so neatly divided into “either-or” formulations. Sometimes we’re right, sometimes not. Our national interests may align on some measures with Country A, and diverge on others. Policymakers can be good people who are simply mistaken—or for that matter, they may be sleaze-balls who are on the right side of an argument. As I tell my students, reality is generally more complicated than we like to admit.

Which brings us back to that scary word, “socialism.” I happen to be a fairly rabid believer in markets and limited government. But markets only work when buyers and sellers operate in accordance with sound rules and with equal access to relevant information. Throughout our history, Republican and Democratic administrations alike have intervened when they believed particular markets weren’t working. Often that intervention was misguided. At other times, lack of intervention was the problem. Whether markets work in a particular economic area is—or should be—an empirical inquiry, not an ideological one.

There are different ways to “socialize” costs. Americans socialize risk using private markets when we purchase insurance.  We use government—through social security—to socialize the risks of poverty among the elderly. The real question is whether a particular endeavor should be left to the market, under fair but not excessive regulation, or whether there may be compelling reasons to have government handle it.

In fact, when you think about it, a decision to have government manage a particular task is a decision to “socialize” that task—to pool our resources in the form of taxes to provide a social good or service. Public safety is a good example—we have decided, as a society, that police protection should be “socialized” and available to all citizens, not just the ones who can afford private security.

Principled people can certainly disagree whether this or that service should be provided by government or by the market.  But it is unhelpful, to put it mildly, to substitute accusatory labels for thoughtful discussion of the pros and cons. It is worse than unhelpful to suggest that every government initiative is tantamount to turning the country socialist. America has been a mixed economy for a long time. The proper question is the appropriateness of the mix.  

 

 

 

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Every four years, candidates for offices high and low attribute the problems of government to a distressing lack of bipartisanship, and promise that—if elected—they will “reach across the aisle” to “solve real problems.” These promises are so predictable, and so empty, that most of us simply tune them out.

Wonder of wonders, however, a genuinely bipartisan effort is being mounted right now, right here in Indiana, to address what most impartial observers agree is the most significant governance problem we Hoosiers face.

MySmartgov.org has been formed to enact recommendations initially made by the Kernan-Shepard Commission, a bipartisan group of Indiana leaders who studied the structure of Indiana government and issued a report with numerous recommendations in December 2007. As its name suggests, the commission was led by former Governor Joe Kernan and Chief Justice Randall Shepard, who accepted the task at the request of Governor Mitch Daniels.

It is telling that the Commission’s recommendations closely mirrored those made by Gov. Paul McNutt—in 1936.  Never let it be said that Hoosiers rush into anything.

MySmartgov.org proves the old adage that politics makes strange bedfellows. Its most prominent member-supporters, other than the original Commission participants, are the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, the Central Indiana Corporate Community Council, the Indiana Realtors, and the Professional Firefighters Union. Its Executive Director is Marilyn Shultz, formerly the State Budget Director during the Kernan Administration. Even the organization’s blogging is being done by a team consisting of one Republican and one Democrat.

Why is this a big deal? Because Indiana’s inefficient and bloated governing structure is strangling us, driving up property taxes while starving service delivery.

Governing decisions enacted in 1816 and 1851 are still on the books, and as a result, Indiana citizens pay for, and are governed by, more than 10,300 local officials. The state “boasts” 3,086 separate governing bodies, hundreds of which have taxing authority. When we compare Indiana to 11 other states our size, we have more levels of government than all but two of them.

It is this bloated superstructure that makes it nearly impossible to follow through on the other perennial promise of political candidates—the promise to root out waste. Here in Indianapolis, for example, Mayor Ballard is belatedly realizing just how limited his options are. It’s easy to criticise incumbents and demand to know where our tax dollars are going; what too few of those critics understand is that most of the waste is in our governing structures, in overlapping and outmoded units of government. It’s certainly not in service delivery, which has been cut to the bone.

In Indiana, we don’t put tax revenues to work enhancing our quality of life. Instead, we use them to pay for 1008 Township Trustees and other officeholders we no longer need.

In some contexts, bipartisanship is code for retaining the status quo. In this case, however, it is the only way Indiana can progress. Liberal or conservative, Republican or Democratic, we all deserve efficient, accountable government. Smart government.

 

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It’s hard not to feel sorry for Mayor Greg Ballard. Not just because he’s being hit with criticism from all sides, but because he was so clearly unprepared for the realities he faces.

The most basic question of politics—the question every mayor must confront—is “what is government’s job?” The answers fall into a spectrum between “you’re on your own” and “we’re all in this together.” It should be noted that these aren’t partisan categories; Steve Goldsmith and Bill Hudnut, both Republicans, had very different visions of government’s responsibilities. (I used to describe the differences between them by suggesting that, if a poll showed lack of public support for transportation planning, Hudnut would explain to people why such planning was essential, while Goldsmith would stop planning.)

Most of us agree in the abstract that government should do only those things that must be done collectively, and should leave other tasks to the private sector. The problem comes when we try to apply that principle to specific tasks.

Let’s take garbage collection as an example. There are private scavenger companies that will pick up your garbage for a fee—why not leave that responsibility with homeowners? The short answer is that some people will be irresponsible or unable to pay for the service, and uncollected garbage is a threat to the health of all of us.

We don’t hire private security firms to provide public policing, not just because we have made a collective judgment that the use of force should be controlled by those who are accountable to the public, but also because we have learned that providing public safety is a broader, more complex task than policing alone.

We support transportation planning because failure to do so creates traffic nightmares and costs a fortune when gridlock forces us to add more concrete to our already bloated highways. (We are paying dearly today for prior mayors’ decisions to “save” money by cutting back on planning.)

We support the arts, public parks and public transportation (however inadequately) because we have learned that successful economic development depends upon the quality of life in a community—and economic development is critical if we are to maintain a tax base that allows us to collect garbage, pay police and pave streets.

It’s impossible to construct a city budget without first deciding what it is that government must do. People of good will can differ on the answer to that question, but those differences must be based upon an appreciation of how cities actually work. Money saved by refusing to pick up garbage will eventually be offset by increased costs of public health. Money saved by selling off parks will add to the costs of public safety and make it much more difficult to attract new employers.

Greg Ballard seems like a very nice man, but it is increasingly clear that he is in over his head. And while he’s learning that running a city is complicated, all of us are paying his tuition.

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I’ve just finished Fareed Zakaria’s recent book, “The Post-American World,” in which he discusses—among other things—the growing power of India and China, and what that growth portends for American interests.

To my mind, the most interesting part of the book came in the final chapters, as he evaluated America’s strengths and weaknesses in the context of the global challenges we face. One paragraph in particular struck me as a particularly apt statement of our current dilemma.

“The economic dysfunctions in America today are real, but by and large, they are not the product of deep inefficiencies within the American economy, nor are they reflections of cultural decay. They are the consequences of specific government policies. Different policies could quickly and relatively easily move the United States into a far more stable footing….Policy experts do not have wide disagreements on most of these issues, and none of the proposed measures would require sacrifices reminiscent of wartime hardship, only modest adjustments of existing arrangements. And yet, because of politics, they appear impossible. The American political system has lost the ability for large-scale compromise, and it has lost the ability to accept some pain now for much gain later.”

In short, Zakaria says our economic system is fundamentally sound when appropriately regulated. Our political system, however, is broken. Zakaria gives a number of reasons for this state of affairs, and most of us can add to his list. But one reason, I think, has gotten short shrift, especially from the so-called “chattering classes.” It’s what Bush 41 used to call “the vision thing.”

It has become fashionable to dismiss articulation of a vision as naïve, as the opposite of the sort of “can-do” policy-wonk approach that pundits and bureaucrats favor. But just as you can’t get Mapquest to give you directions to an unknown destination, you cannot muster political will or encourage political compromise in service of incremental changes and “course corrections.” In a democracy, unless there is a clearly articulated vision—a map clearly showing where you want to take the city, state or country—it is simply not possible to overcome the entrenched politics of self-interest and self-dealing.

When Ronald Reagan became President, “sophisticated” observers sneered at his evocation of “Morning in America.”What they failed to appreciate was the importance of placing policy specifics within an overarching framework mapping a destination.

I think Americans are hungry for that map, that vision, showing how America can do again what it has always done best—lead through example. But first, we have to believe in ourselves again. We have to remind ourselves of the values that make us American. We need to recommit ourselves to those values, and we need to restore the rule of law.

If history teaches us anything, it is that we need visionary leadership to remind us who we are, and what Americans can achieve when we work together.
How many of us, after all, are willing to set off on a voyage without a clear map?

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