Yuval Levin: ‘Saving Can-Do’ Review: How to Stop Dragging Feet

This brief, accessible and powerfully persuasive book assesses the symptoms of our ailing polity and concludes that we are suffering from a widespread loss of agency, the lifeblood of any free society.

That loss begins and ends with a lack of trust. Some mid-20th-century activists and regulators worried that both government and the private sector in America were running needless risks that endangered individual rights and public health and safety. So they set about constraining the range of choices available to private and public decision makers, replacing individual discretion with legal frameworks that would make uncertain tradeoffs less necessary. “The post-1960s complex of rules, processes, and rights,” Mr. Howard argues, “has been designed with one overriding operational premise—to preempt human judgment.”

Essays & ReportsAndrew ParkSeptember 30, 2025Yuval Levin, Wall Street Journal

Francis Fukuyama: Hold On, Elon and Vivek: Firing Federal Bureaucrats Isn’t the Solution

Federal agencies need more discretion, not less. Many of the rules they follow are not statutory, and one useful function that DOGE could perform is to identify and eliminate the most outdated and inefficient of them. As Philip Howard, the author of many books on simplifying government and founder of the nonpartisan group Common Good, has pointed out over the years, bureaucrats need more freedom to use their own good judgment regarding the implementation of policy, rather than being forced to follow rules.

Essays & ReportsAndrew ParkDecember 13, 2024Francis Fukuyama, DOGE, Commentator, Wall Street Journal

Elon and Vivek Can Make Government Work Again

Most Americans know that Washington is overdue for a Department of Government Efficiency. But what should such a commission fix?

The civil service certainly needs an overhaul to establish accountability from top to bottom. The point, however, isn’t to inject a sense of terror in government employees but to instill trust that everyone is held to the same standards.

Essays & ReportsAndrew ParkNovember 14, 2024Philip K. Howard, Wall Street Journal, DOGE

The Weekend Interview: Public Unions vs. the People

Mr. Howard, a lawyer and writer, first noticed how unions stymie governance during his public service in New York as a member of a neighborhood zoning board and chairman of the Municipal Art Society. “I kept wondering why my friends who had responsible jobs in government couldn’t do what they thought was right,” he recalls. That might be speeding up a land-use review for a construction project or approving repairs on a school building.