Maybe it’s me, but the news cycle seems both terrifying and tedious. We’re treated to a steady diet of crises followed by reactions which create new crises. It’s as if we’re in a straitjacket, bouncing off today’s emergency instead of making deliberate choices that might lead to a coherent future.
In a thoughtful New York Times column, Ben Rhodes explains how “short-term compulsions blind us to the forces remaking our lives.” He characterizes Trump as seeking “short-term ‘wins’ at the expense of the future”—for example, ignoring unsustainable national debt, climate change, and other existential perils. But Rhodes says Democrats too are trapped in short-termism—“spend[ing] more time defending what is being lost than imagining what will take its place.”
Politics now has a dizzying quality. The roller-coaster of Trump policies―now we do this, now we do the opposite―is being matched by wild swings in the Democratic positions, led by socialist Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York City mayoral primary. Just imagine, as liberal columnist Joe Klein mused, the staggering inefficiency of a municipal grocery store operating under union work rules: "Sorry, I only restock on Thursdays."
Centrist democrats are trying to mobilize an Abundance agenda to cut through red tape to build housing and infrastructure. That's a step in the right direction, but pruning the red tape jungle doesn't work by itself. Officials must have authority to make tradeoff judgments.
Aaron Renn sits down with Philip Howard to discuss the crippling bureaucratic red tape stifling America’s ability to build and innovate. From the New Deal’s rapid achievements to today’s endless legal labyrinths, Howard proposes a bold solution: a framework rooted in human responsibility and accountability to restore America’s can-do spirit.
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DOGE seems hellbent on taking an indiscriminate chainsaw to the government itself instead of pruning and cutting back in strategic ways. Philip Howard talks with Larry Rifkin about what needs to be done to enhance the performance of government and hold political leaders to account.
Read MoreAt the start of Infrastructure Week, Common Good Chair Philip K. Howard called today for the United States to end its infrastructure paralysis by adopting a new framework to modernize U.S. infrastructure. This framework would replace balkanized approvals by multiple agencies and multiple levels of government with one decision-making hierarchy.
Read MoreThe world today feels like a rowboat in a storm, with leaders directing their powers towards destruction and disruption. There's no line of sight towards a strong and stable American government.
There's growing consensus, however, that paralytic bureaucracy must be replaced. But replaced with what? DOGE is swinging its wrecking ball without a new governing vision. Democrats seem almost catatonic, calling weakly for more government instead of effective government.
So far Elon Musk's DOGE initiative has focused on cutting programs and terminating civil servants, not reforms to improve public performance. But there's broad public and expert opinion that government operating systems are overdue for overhaul.
This forum will focus on the operational failures of the current state, and will include proposals to empower common sense solutions, make government more manageable, and clarify the role of oversight by courts.
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So far the Trump administration’s DOGE initiative has focused on cutting programs and terminating civil servants, not reforms to improve public performance. But there's broad public and expert opinion that government operating systems are overdue for overhaul.
This forum focused on the operational failures of the current state, and included proposals to empower common sense solutions, make government more manageable, and clarify the role of oversight by courts.
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Philip Howard talks with Lynn Thoman about how public employee unions have a grip on the operating machinery of government, and how to restore accountability and honor to public service.
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Philip Howard talks with Tom Temin about DOGE, and the need to rethink how the government does what it does.
Read MoreAmerica is bogged down in red tape. This is not a secret. Common sense is nowhere, because common sense is illegal.
A brigade of worthy new books is sounding the alarm, and are summarized by David Brooks in his column this week: “We Can Achieve Great Things.” Other public intellectuals calling for a better way of governing are IT expert Jennifer Pahlka, law professor Nicholas Bagley, and political scientist Francis Fukuyama.
What's missing is a discussion of the philosophical flaw underlying the modern state.
In Saving Can-Do, Common Good Chair Philip K. Howard unlocks the quandary of populist resentment and also of broken government.
America is flailing in legal quicksand. The solution is a new governing framework that allows Americans to roll up their sleeves and take responsibility. We must scrap the red tape state. What’s required is a multi-year effort to replace these massive failed bureaucracies with simpler codes that are activated by people using their judgment. As America approaches the 250th anniversary of the revolution, it’s time to reclaim the magic of America’s unique can-do culture.
Saving Can-Do will be released by Rodin Books on September 23, 2025.
Yes, the bureaucracy in Washington is a clogged-up tangle. That’s why two-thirds of Americans think it needs a major overhaul.
But slashing away at Washington’s many stupidities won’t fix much — like trying to prune a jungle. The way to drain the swamp is to pull the plug on its flawed operating philosophy — the post-1960s red tape compliance model. Americans are swimming in red tape. Is your paperwork in order?
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Philip Howard and Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute talk with Margaret Hoover about President Trump's deep state blitz, what DOGE is getting wrong, and their advice for Elon Musk in a forum at Hofstra University.
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In recent weeks, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has moved to eliminate the U.S. Agency for International Development, while President Trump prepared an executive order to wind down the U.S. Department of Education. It’s the latest attempt to make government more efficient by eliminating things that it does. Merely shuttering departments, however, won’t get to the heart of the problem DOGE seeks to correct: The American public sector, at any level of government, can’t get things done in a time-effective and efficient manner.
A new Manhattan Institute report provides an antidote to this public malaise in the context of infrastructure. Its author, Philip K. Howard, offers a new governing vision that authorizes officials to weigh tradeoffs and make decisions for the public’s benefit.
Disruption can be good or bad. Or both. Courts will decide how far the new administration can go. At Common Good, our focus is to try to ride in front of the DOGE stampede and turn it towards new visions of how to fix endemic public failures.
Tearing down the status quo is not enough, and will have unintended consequences. America needs a new governing philosophy. Here are two big opportunities for new operating structures.
Everyone knows that Washington is broken. Reformers on the right want to cut useless programs, and reformers on the left want to streamline rules and procedures. But neither reform approach will remove the red tape that suffocates common sense. There’s always another rule, another process needed to discuss a new issue.
Americans are harmed, not helped, by all this process.
The modern state is built on a flawed philosophy of law. Governing requires officials, not law, to make decisions.
Read MoreIt's hard to keep track of what's being knocked over in the continuing DOGE stampede. Broad public resentment at Washington fuels the deconstruction, and shows no sign of abating. Over time, courts will try to impose some order on the bureaucratic rubble.
The end goal, presumably, is a government that works better and is more respectful of local needs and values. But tearing things down is not a vision for sensible government. Will a better form of government emerge from the rubble?
In a report published by Manhattan Institute, Philip Howard argues that Washington needs to abandon the bureaucratic compliance model, and replace it with a simpler framework that empowers designated officials to make tradeoff judgments to modernize infrastructure and achieve public results.
Governing structures created after the 1960s are designed to fail because they presume legal rules and processes can validate correct choices. But law can't think. The proper role of law is to provide a framework that delineates the authority to make that decision, and provides public transparency and oversight.
Read MoreThe noise from Washington is an orchestrated symphony of wrecking balls. Most Americans agree that the red tape state needs to be replaced. But where's the vision for its replacement?
Take civil service—today, federal employees are unaccountable and unmanageable, thanks to statutory and union controls that eviscerate executive authority. What's needed is not a regime based on fear, however, but one that instills mutual trust and pride.