Updates
"The Rule of Nobody" author Philip K. Howard describes the unexpected paralysis that has afflicted the American government.
“The land of the free has become a legal minefield, says Philip K. Howard -- especially for teachers and doctors, whose work has been paralyzed by fear of suits. What's the answer? A lawyer himself, Howard has four propositions for simplifying US law.”
Essays & Reports
Look at American culture. Something basic is missing. Americans know it. Nothing much works as it should. Simple daily choices seem fraught with peril. In the workplace, we walk on eggshells. Big projects—say, modernizing infrastructure—get stalled in years of review. Endemic social problems such as homelessness become, well, more endemic. Oh, there goes San Francisco. Doing what’s right is not on the table. Who’s to say what’s right? Extremism grows.
Powerlessness has become a defining feature of modern society. Americans at all levels of responsibility feel powerless to do what they think is needed.
Here we are, led like sheep into an election to choose whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump should lead America at this perilous time. A clear majority disfavor the choice. Nor do the hot buttons of political debate between woke progressives vs. right wing conspiracists align with the views of most Americans.
Out in the real world, nothing much about government works as it should, with porous borders, broken schools, and homeless encampments. The list is long. Mandatory speech codes and other indignities of the nanny state fuel growing resentment.
Much of the answer lies in Everyday Freedom, a powerful and succinct new book by Philip Howard. As liberals ushered in a wave of fundamental changes to individual freedom and equality beginning in the 1960s — one of the great achievements in human history — they rightly sought to constrain the power of government to impinge on individual rights.
Americans have lost confidence in America. It’s not hard to see why. Broken schools, unaffordable health care, homelessness, decrepit infrastructure, and student mobs at universities readily come to mind.
The last three presidents have come to office promising “change we can believe in,” to “drain the swamp,” or to “build back better,” but government institutions seem beyond their control.
Pundits blame political polarization. But most public failures have little to do with policy or politics: They’re failures of execution.
Trust in institutions is at all-time lows. Schools and hospitals are distrusted by two-thirds of Americans, large companies by even more, and Congress by almost everybody.
The one trust bright spot is small business, with a 65 percent trust level. What is it that small business has that other institutions do not? Small business retains the human connection. The guy in the local hardware store will talk with you about how to fix the problem. The lady at the cleaners will discuss the stain. The book shop proprietor will describe why she liked a book.
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.
Philip Howard is a US lawyer who published a book on The Death of Common Sense in 1995 and has been writing about the subject ever since. His new book, Everyday Freedom, is due out next week. Howard thinks that the root of the problem is “trained helplessness.” People usually know how to fix things — teachers know how to keep order in the classroom, police chiefs know who the bad apples are, local officials know that they need to build new infrastructure. But they are all prevented from using their best judgments because they are trapped in systems that are more concerned with avoiding mistakes (and penalizing people who make mistakes) than on getting things done.
In his latest, “Everyday Freedom,” Howard cites the buildup since the 1960s of laws and rules that were intended to ensure procedural fairness, but in practice have chipped away at officials’ authority to do their jobs.
Modern law, he says, has created “an elaborate precautionary system aimed at precluding human error.” Public officials have learned it’s safer to hide behind highly prescriptive laws and regulations than to risk using their judgment, moral intuition and common sense to solve public problems.
System failure is going on all around us—the 911 operator who puts you on hold; the outsourced federal “processing centers” that are months behind on essential tasks; the public-school officials who do nothing when told a six-year-old has a loaded handgun in his backpack; the mandatory D.E.I. training that says you can’t say “pregnant women” anymore—now you have to say “pregnant people.” We’ve all seen versions of it. We get steamed up about it. We go online and commiserate about it. But most of us don’t think about it in analytical terms. That’s what Howard does.
Put simply, democracy’s hierarchy for managing government no longer exists. Elected executives are largely powerless to manage public employees or redirect public resources. The people below them in the chain of responsibility, such as school principals, police chiefs, and supervisory officials, are similarly powerless. Every day, government employees across America do things that are designed to waste money and be ineffective.
Appearances
In his discussion with Adam Epstein, Philip Howard discusses his latest book, Everyday Freedom, which argues that the post 1960’s legal framework which has guided government policy for 60 years has been a failure.
Philip Howard talks with his daughter Charlotte Howard, Executive Editor at The Economist, about his new book Everyday Freedom, and what he considers to be the root causes of government failure.
Philip Howard joins a panel discussion with Nobel Prize laureates Edmund Phelps and Paul Romer, Yuval Levin, and Jennifer Murtazashvili, moderated by Mene Ukueberuwa; part of the “Re-empowering Human Agency” forum on April 19, 2023 at Columbia University.
Julie Hartman and Philip Howard talk about the role of law as explored in Philip’s books.
Philip Howard talks with National Review’s Dominic Pino about Not Accountable.
Newsletters
According to a 2020 survey, about two-thirds of Americans share basic values—including truthfulness, treating people equally, respecting common interests over party affiliation, and a desire for leaders to bring Americans together. Instead, the research group More in Common found, this “exhausted majority” is shoved into competing voting blocs by a relatively small number of extremists on both sides.
The disproportionate influence of extremists stems in part from a definitional bait-and-switch.
Sometimes it feels like American culture is going through the spin cycle of a washing machine. Facts aren’t facts (“stop the steal”). Free speech means speech codes. Nondiscrimination means discrimination. Rights are a sword against others’ rights. Achievement is unfair. Human judgment is judgmental. Individuality is identity. Tradition is suspect. The rule of law is a minefield of legal risks, not a framework for social trust. Freedom is compliance.
Finding our balance is hard, especially when centrifugal forces have spun many Americans into opposing camps that loathe each other.
Americans now know the Democratic and Republican nominees for president. But there are eight months to go before the election. How will the media fill that time?
We have a suggestion: Let’s talk about how to fix broken government. What’s needed, say, to deal with infrastructure, or homelessness, or healthcare red tape, or, especially, lousy schools?
Fixing each of those areas of public failure is not rocket science, in our view. What’s required, however, is to change the operating system—to re-empower people in charge to make decisions instead of slogging through red tape.
Trust in America’s social institutions is at all-time lows. Distrust is like sand in the gears, causing people to question decisions and act defensively. Red tape grows in order to avoid argument: “The rule made me do it.” Institutions lose empathy as well as efficiency. Distrust grows. It’s a downward spiral.
We tend to think of institutions such as schools, hospitals and workplaces as inanimate objects. But institutions are the beating heart of a free society—not only providing virtually all products and services, but providing the framework for each of us to earn our livelihood and fulfill our professional ambitions.
The world order is in danger – with major conflicts raging or threatened on three continents. America needs to be strong.
Instead, as RAND defense expert Michael J. Mazarr explains, the Department of Defense is “overgrown with rules [and] bureaucracy,” and “more concerned with following procedure, preserving institutional habits, and hoarding power and resources than generating positive outcomes.” It is imperative that “the United States...overhaul its defense institutions.”
It is also difficult for America to be strong abroad while weak at home.