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“Nothing that’s any good works by itself…You got to make the damn thing work.”
This practical wisdom of Thomas Edison applies to most meaningful life activities. Teachers, doctors, waiters, plumbers, ministers, inspectors, all confront situations where they have to decide what to do next. Even with miraculous technological tools, judgments are still needed to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, make tradeoffs, take risks, and make choices that are considered fair.
Americans broadly agree that government is broken. Our inability to modernize infrastructure, or provide quality education, or produce defense weaponry, presents an existential threat in a world threatened by totalitarian regimes that are not institutionally paralyzed.
Philip K. Howard, a graduate of Taft prep school, Yale and the University of Virginia School of Law, says he never wore “white bucks.” This 1950s campus fashion waned before he matriculated. Those buckskin shoes were popular among young blades destined to become “white-shoe lawyers” at prestigious “white-shoe law firms,” such as Covington & Burling, where Howard, 76, is senior counsel.
He also is a genteel inveigher against the coagulation of American society, which is saturated with law. In his new book “Saving Can-Do: How to Revive the Spirit of America,” he argues that law’s proper role is preventing transgressions by authorities, not micromanaging choices so minutely that red tape extinguishes individual responsibility and the social trust that individualism engenders.
Common Good Chair Philip K. Howard’s new book, Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions, will be published by Rodin Books on January 24. In the book, he argues that public employee unions have undermined democratic governance and should be unconstitutional. Constitutional government can’t work when elected leaders lose control over public operating machinery.