Everyday Freedom
by Philip Howard.
Philip K. Howard is a lawyer, author, and civic leader. He is chair of Common Good, a nonpartisan organization aimed at simplifying government. He grew up in Kentucky and lives in New York City. His new book, published this week, is Everyday Freedom: Designing the framework for a flourishing society. We encourage you to read it.
Trump carried every county in Iowa except one, and now a solid majority in New Hampshire. What accounts for the Trump juggernaut? He obviously embodies something that many voters want.
My take is that all his serious rivals, now just Haley and Biden, have promised to be better leaders of the established order. But Trump embodies rejection, even disdain, for the establishment. As in 2016, he is lapping his challengers with his contempt for the Washington establishment and, indeed, for democracy itself. Americans are angry, and traditional campaigns based on character, policy proposals, and baby-kissing are not resonating.
For years now, Americans have seen that nothing much works as it should. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens explains that Trump is riding “a wave of pessimism.” Referring to Alana Newhouse’s writing, Stephens notes that “brokenness has become the defining feature of much of American life: broken families, broken public schools, broken small towns and inner cities, broken universities, broken health care, broken media, broken churches, broken borders, broken government.”
Trump has a feral genius for picking the scab of American resentment. He derides immigrants and suggests he’ll fire thousands of civil servants (nearly all Democrats). He admires Putin and flirts with concepts like dictatorship. He scoffs at multiple indictments.
Trump’s popularity is a flashing red warning of system failure. Trump sees what the other candidates do not: Americans hate Big Brother. The brokenness of government is the least of it.
The government tells us what to do, and how to do it, without doing its own job very well. Immigration is out of control. The workplace is a thicket of rules. Have you finished your DEI and anti-harassment training? Is your paperwork in order? Don’t be yourself: you wouldn’t want someone to feel “unsafe.” Washington is bad theater, like watching phoniness on a continual loop. At least Trump is entertaining. Did you hear the one about how Ivy League universities are beacons of free speech? Oh, and never forget that most of you are bigots, the beneficiaries of white privilege—even if you’re working yourself to the bone with two jobs, and still have trouble making ends meet.
Suffocation + Sanctimony + ineptitude = Revolution.
The opportunity here is to out-bold Trump. Trump can tear down the established order, but what’s needed is a coherent vision of what should replace it. No candidate of either party has even hinted at a new public operating philosophy. Rebuilding government also requires not just a wrecking ball, but trust. Institutions can’t function without trust at the top—trust in consistent standards, values and common purpose. Who would you trust to lead the rebuilding of government for the benefit of everyone?
Trump has the field of brokenness to himself right now. Here’s a speech—for Haley, or Biden, or maybe Joe Manchin to deliver--that might provoke a serious debate with him on what America needs:
"Something has gone wrong with American society in the last few decades. Things seem out of control. Teachers have lost authority over the classroom, doctors and nurses spend half the day filling out forms, you risk your job by telling a joke in the workplace. Washington is useless, like a perpetual motion machine. It can't even give a permit for a transmission line everybody agrees is needed.
“America has a vast reservoir of the human spirit. But it's dammed up inside the massive legal concrete of Washington. My priority as president will be to open those floodgates and release Americans’ energy and ingenuity in all parts of our society. Area by area, we'll replace dense rulebooks with simpler frameworks, like the Constitution, that are activated by human responsibility. Let Americans be Americans. Give Americans the freedom to do what’s right. Give back to our communities the responsibility to do things in our own ways. Judge us by how we do, but don't tell us how to do it.
“Accountability must work both ways: Give us back the power to hold the people in government accountable.
“Somewhere along the line, Washington lost the memo: Nothing works unless a person makes it work. As President, I’ll lead a transformation of government to restore the everyday freedom of Americans at all levels of society. Decades of dense red tape will be replaced by simple frameworks that people can understand and be accountable for. This will be fun.
“Donald Trump sees the idiocies in the system, but he has no vision of how to replace it. He could never lead an overhaul because giving people responsibility requires some level of trust, not just by our side but by everyone. No institution works unless the people in charge are trusted to maintain common standards of right and good. Donald Trump is many things, but trustworthy is not one of them.
“It's time for us—I mean all of us—to take back control. That requires rebuilding government, and society, on the solid foundation of human responsibility.”
The coming debt crises will supersede many other issues, regardless of the political party.
I read the Bret Stephens NYT piece which I thought also captured the fundamentals of Trump's anti-establishment positioning, and Howard's book sounds interesting. But every time I hear this thesis, the chill returns as I recall reading Patrick Deenen's 'Why Liberalism Failed' in 2018. He's a lot more skeptical that we can reverse the course of over-reaching government by a return to libertarian ideals. He worries that it is those libertarian ideals themselves, intrinsic to the American Experiment which brought us to this paradoxical impasse whereby the relentless protection of each individuals' liberties requires an ever more muscular and intrusive state. I really hope that's not true, but Trumps' message of 'tear it all down' without any plan for 'replace it with this,' fits with Deenen's very dark conclusion that 3-4 centuries of experimentation with liberalism has run its course...