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Why Are Democrats Afraid of Power? · Pod Save America

0:04
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody.
0:20
Speaker 2: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Lovett. Obviously, right now,
0:23
Speaker 2: for National Democrats, success is defined by what we can stop.
0:27
Speaker 2: It counts. as some kind of good news when the
0:29
Speaker 2: president walks back his threat to use military force against
0:32
Speaker 2: Greenland or removes a petty tyrant in a fascist outfit
0:36
Speaker 2: from the streets of Minneapolis. And our job over the
0:39
Speaker 2: next year is to use what little power we have
0:41
Speaker 2: to stop the administration's worst successes while winning what will
0:45
Speaker 2: ultimately be a referendum on Trump's cruelty and failures. But
0:49
Speaker 2: regardless of the outcome in 2026, the Democrats are in
0:52
Speaker 2: a massive hole. The country maybe turning against Trump, but
0:56
Speaker 2: that has not corresponded to any newfound love for his opposition.
0:59
Speaker 2: In recent polls, barely a third of voters have a
1:02
Speaker 2: positive view of the Democratic Party. And so one thing
1:06
Speaker 2: we're trying to do is have conversations about where we
1:09
Speaker 2: go from here, whatever happens in the midterms. And so
1:12
Speaker 2: that's why I wanted to have the conversation we had today.
1:15
Speaker 2: I spoke to Mark Dunkelman. He wrote a book called
1:18
Speaker 2: Why Nothing Works. And it is a story about what
1:22
Speaker 2: happened to progressive governance and the changes in the way
1:27
Speaker 2: progressives think about power between the New Deal and today
1:31
Speaker 2: and what we need to do to prove to people
1:34
Speaker 2: that Democrats not only deserve power, but Democrats know how
1:38
Speaker 2: to use power once we have it. And a lot
1:41
Speaker 2: of times this gets framed as a left center left debate.
1:45
Speaker 2: It kind of falls into the usual grooves of our
1:48
Speaker 2: kind of ideological fights over the last 10 or more years.
1:53
Speaker 2: Sometimes it feels like people like to bring their old
1:55
Speaker 2: baggage to a debate because it's easier than packing a
2:00
Speaker 2: new suitcase. But I think it's worth listening to this
2:03
Speaker 2: as an opportunity for everybody in the pro-democracy movement to
2:08
Speaker 2: understand what we have to do to demonstrate to people
2:11
Speaker 2: that democracy can actually deliver for people and that progressives
2:15
Speaker 2: can actually deliver on the promises that we make. Whatever
2:18
Speaker 2: you believe government should be trying to do for people,
2:21
Speaker 2: whatever vision you believe the Democratic Party should have. It
2:24
Speaker 2: was a great conversation that will help put in context
2:28
Speaker 2: some of the fights we're having right now about the
2:30
Speaker 2: role of government and some of the reasons that Trump
2:36
Speaker 2: is able to make a lot of political hay out
2:40
Speaker 2: of him being able to do things that other people
2:42
Speaker 2: couldn't do and why Democrats need to carefully learn some
2:47
Speaker 2: lessons from that while understanding that we should also listen
2:50
Speaker 2: to people and follow the law and respect basic values
2:54
Speaker 2: and the role of institutions. So it was a great conversation.
2:57
Speaker 2: It was a book I really enjoyed, and I think
3:00
Speaker 2: you'll like it. Welcome to the show. Nice to meet you.
3:07
Speaker 3: Great to meet you.
3:08
Speaker 2: So I am a huge fan of your book, Why
3:12
Speaker 2: Nothing Works.
3:13
Speaker 3: Thanks.
3:14
Speaker 2: And then there's a subtitle. So I want to start
3:16
Speaker 2: with something you wrote recently, and then we'll get into
3:19
Speaker 2: the book, which you wrote an op-ed for The Times
3:22
Speaker 2: called What the Left Could Learn from Trump's Brutal Efficiency.
3:27
Speaker 2: And I think that's a great way in to the
3:30
Speaker 2: debate around the book. So what can we learn from
3:35
Speaker 2: Trump's brutal efficiency?
3:39
Speaker 3: So the thing that I want those of us on
3:42
Speaker 3: the left to think about is the degree to which
3:47
Speaker 3: our primary zeitgeist for the last 50 years has been
3:52
Speaker 3: to speak truth to power. We see big institutions, we
3:57
Speaker 3: see powerful people and our instinct is to say there's
4:02
Speaker 3: something wrong there. They're do something wrong. They're somehow smooshing
4:06
Speaker 3: little people and we need to out with the bad
4:11
Speaker 3: things they're doing. figure it out, call it out, stop it.
4:16
Speaker 3: And that is largely at odds with what progressivism began
4:21
Speaker 3: as a mission, which was how do we create big,
4:25
Speaker 3: powerful institutions that will do big things for people who
4:28
Speaker 3: can't do for themselves? Those are two totally different missions.
4:34
Speaker 3: And Trump has come into office and he's got control
4:41
Speaker 3: over this huge bureaucracy and He's done things with it.
4:46
Speaker 3: The quintessential thing, it's not the most important thing that
4:49
Speaker 3: he's done. It's not something that I particularly like, but
4:51
Speaker 3: he just knocked down the East Wing of the White House.
4:53
Speaker 3: He just did it. That is a powerful example of
4:58
Speaker 3: a guy who said, I'm not going to go through
5:00
Speaker 3: the process. I'm not going to bow to the whims
5:05
Speaker 3: of all the boxes I need to check, all the
5:08
Speaker 3: T's I need to cross, all the I's I need
5:10
Speaker 3: to dot. I'm just going to do things that progressives
5:15
Speaker 3: in many cases don't think to do. I think that
5:19
Speaker 3: in order for us to be popular again, we need
5:22
Speaker 3: to show that government can work. I think we are
5:26
Speaker 3: already by default the party of government. Our movement is
5:29
Speaker 3: the one that wants government to work. And so that
5:32
Speaker 3: if we're going to try to glean a mandate from
5:36
Speaker 3: the people, we need to make government work in the
5:39
Speaker 3: first place. And that means that they need to have
5:41
Speaker 3: a sense that when they want things to be done,
5:45
Speaker 3: government is going to actually deliver.
5:48
Speaker 2: So obviously, uh, Trump, uh, manages to move quickly, knock
5:53
Speaker 2: down East wings, destroy bureaucracies because he's breaking the law
5:57
Speaker 2: and a lot of cases are ignoring, uh, regulations, uh,
6:01
Speaker 2: wherever it suits him. Uh, how much are we limited
6:06
Speaker 2: because we wouldn't do that? Like how, how much could
6:08
Speaker 2: there be a democratic version of that? Um, that is
6:11
Speaker 2: bound by law, uh, that does have respect for institutions,
6:15
Speaker 2: but also wants to move quickly. Like, like it feels
6:18
Speaker 2: like we're kind of the two options, which is the,
6:22
Speaker 2: the kind of, uh, a democratic style of leadership in
6:26
Speaker 2: which you're kind of like in Gulliver's travelers kind of
6:30
Speaker 2: tied down. And then you have Trump who's, uh, uh, Lawless, right?
6:36
Speaker 2: Like I don't know I can't I don't how do
6:38
Speaker 2: you decide where that line is where a democratic president
6:42
Speaker 2: would be able to move quickly and Get things done
6:46
Speaker 2: quickly while being respectful of those institutions.
6:49
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I think it's a terrific point in a
6:51
Speaker 3: terrific distinction the point I want to make here is
6:56
Speaker 3: that when we are creating programs and when we are
6:59
Speaker 3: thinking about the reforms that we want to do next
7:01
Speaker 3: time we're in office.
7:03
Speaker 2: If that ever happens. And that's something we just do
7:05
Speaker 2: hope will happen.
7:05
Speaker 1: Yep.
7:06
Speaker 3: Continue. Well, I'm going to presume that until proven not,
7:09
Speaker 3: I'm going to presume that it will happen.
7:10
Speaker 2: Great.
7:11
Speaker 3: We should be thinking not only about the things that
7:13
Speaker 3: we hope to do, but we should be thinking about
7:16
Speaker 3: how we plan to design those programs in a way
7:19
Speaker 3: so that we can actually deliver so that we are
7:24
Speaker 3: building the sorts of programs, which we used to build,
7:28
Speaker 3: which gave a fair amount of discretion and power to
7:32
Speaker 3: bureaucrats who made decisions and were able to get things
7:35
Speaker 3: done expeditiously. So let me give you an example.
7:39
Speaker 2: So at the beginning of the new deal, so I'm
7:43
Speaker 2: going to ask you, there.
7:44
Speaker 3: Was a region of the country that was fly over
7:47
Speaker 3: country before we had the term. It was the upper South,
7:50
Speaker 3: the area around the Tennessee Valley. It was an area, um,
7:55
Speaker 3: that the local utility had chosen not to wire up
7:58
Speaker 3: because the farmers were so poor that they didn't believe
8:02
Speaker 3: that they'd get any return on the investment of building
8:05
Speaker 3: poles and wires to these poor farmers who were both
8:08
Speaker 3: black and white. And so Franklin Roosevelt hired a lawyer
8:13
Speaker 3: from Wisconsin essentially to, uh, build the Tennessee Valley authority,
8:20
Speaker 3: which by itself had the power. to build dams, build wires,
8:26
Speaker 3: reforest whole countrysides, uh, and through just pure public power,
8:33
Speaker 3: hire both black and white workers who like, let's be honest,
8:38
Speaker 3: were put up in different encampments. Like it was a
8:42
Speaker 3: Southern institution. It was segregated, but they miraculously in almost
8:47
Speaker 3: no time, built a huge power infrastructure that wired up
8:51
Speaker 3: these farms and, you know, really brought enormous benefits to
8:55
Speaker 3: people who were living at, you know, 19th century standards
8:59
Speaker 3: when the rest of the country was well into the
9:01
Speaker 3: 20th century. Incredibly fast, incredible power with, uh, Lilienthal making
9:09
Speaker 3: these decisions, no real concern about local objections, no real input,
9:15
Speaker 3: no environmental impact statements, no sort of considerations like this.
9:23
Speaker 3: The better part of a century later, President Biden in
9:26
Speaker 3: the bipartisan infrastructure bill includes $ 7. 5 billion to put electric
9:32
Speaker 3: vehicle chargers in the places along the network where it
9:35
Speaker 3: does not make economic sense to place EV chargers. He
9:40
Speaker 3: realizes that the reason that people aren't buying electric vehicles
9:44
Speaker 3: is because they are worried that if they want to
9:46
Speaker 3: drive far, they're going to be places on the interstates
9:50
Speaker 3: where there is no place to recharge their car. So
9:52
Speaker 3: they worried the day before Thanksgiving, when they're driving to
9:55
Speaker 3: grandma's house, that they're going to be stuck. There's going
9:57
Speaker 3: to be no place. So he's going to, uh, subsidize
10:01
Speaker 3: the construction of those EVs. There's no federal workforce to
10:04
Speaker 3: build those EV chargers. So he's going to have to, uh,
10:08
Speaker 3: build a rule that will, uh, then, uh, put those
10:13
Speaker 3: dollars in the hands of state highway departments. Those state
10:17
Speaker 3: highway departments have never worked with EV charging companies. They're
10:20
Speaker 3: going to have to figure out what sort of equipment.
10:22
Speaker 3: They're going to have to find places to lease to
10:25
Speaker 3: put those EV chargers that aren't places where the EV
10:28
Speaker 3: charging companies would otherwise want to put the EV chargers.
10:31
Speaker 3: They're then going to have to competitively bid to the
10:33
Speaker 3: EV charging companies so they can compete with them. They're
10:37
Speaker 3: going to have to convince the utility companies that they
10:41
Speaker 3: should sort of set aside all the work they're doing
10:44
Speaker 3: to you know, power up these various data centers that
10:47
Speaker 3: are demanding more and more electricity and instead take some
10:49
Speaker 3: time to wire up these remotely placed EV charging facilities
10:54
Speaker 3: that very few people are going to want to, right?
10:57
Speaker 3: Like it's, I mean, that is a very long process.
11:00
Speaker 3: I think that the people who are working on this program, the,
11:03
Speaker 3: the Nevi program, we're like working really hard. Like, I
11:05
Speaker 3: think like they made lots of really hard to sit like, like, like,
11:09
Speaker 3: I mean, Andrew Rogers, like you can name the people
11:11
Speaker 3: who are involved. Pete Buttigieg, his whole team, like, like
11:14
Speaker 3: I think they were really working hard and diligently at
11:17
Speaker 3: the end of the administration, three years later, $ 7. 5 billion,
11:20
Speaker 3: only 58 charges were out. It looked embarrassing. There were
11:24
Speaker 3: lots of negative stories. It was one of Trump's attacks
11:28
Speaker 3: on the democratic party. That wasn't laziness. It wasn't the
11:30
Speaker 3: bureaucracy gone wrong. It wasn't like, it wasn't anyone's fault
11:34
Speaker 3: per se. But it was the way that the government
11:38
Speaker 3: has been structured, something that happened between when the TVA
11:41
Speaker 3: was able to do things expeditiously and the period where
11:45
Speaker 3: government looked incompetent. And it wasn't government got lazy. It
11:52
Speaker 3: was that we had inserted so many process checks into
11:56
Speaker 3: the system that we, Democrats and progressives and reformers who
12:00
Speaker 3: were afraid of government working too fast, And in many cases,
12:04
Speaker 3: doing things that were bad made it so that government
12:07
Speaker 3: couldn't work effectively.
12:09
Speaker 2: Well, I want to just challenge that a little bit.
12:14
Speaker 2: This is a bipartisan infrastructure bill, right? And if we
12:16
Speaker 2: had wanted as Democrats to pass, say, a proposal that
12:20
Speaker 2: would have created a national core of federal clean energy
12:25
Speaker 2: workers to go across the country rapidly installing these things,
12:28
Speaker 2: you wouldn't have had the Republican administration. support isn't part
12:31
Speaker 2: of the problem here that in order to get something
12:33
Speaker 2: like this through the kind of big, fast moving, uh,
12:37
Speaker 2: new deal style programs you would want are just not
12:40
Speaker 2: politically possible without more democratic control. Like I, I, I,
12:45
Speaker 2: I hear you on once you put it into this system,
12:47
Speaker 2: once you don't just sort of federalize it and have
12:49
Speaker 2: it done at the federal level, uh, yeah, you're going
12:52
Speaker 2: to enter into the buzzsaw of private companies and contracts
12:56
Speaker 2: and local governments and all these rules. But Isn't the
12:59
Speaker 2: alternative just needing a bigger majority?
13:02
Speaker 3: I wonder. I mean, it's an excellent counterfactual. I'd want
13:07
Speaker 3: to ask the folks who are involved, what would the
13:10
Speaker 3: electrical workers think? What would our allies as the state
13:15
Speaker 3: levels think about being preempted?
13:17
Speaker 2: What would the- and kind of drive things to a
13:30
Speaker 2: yes to get things done quickly.
13:32
Speaker 4: Yeah.
13:32
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, even by the time you get
13:35
Speaker 3: to the Johnson administration, you know, the war on poverty,
13:39
Speaker 3: there is a proposal for a jobs core program, which
13:43
Speaker 3: would have trained lots of young people to work in
13:48
Speaker 3: the building trades. And like the unions that are allies
13:53
Speaker 3: of the Johnson administration, kill it in the process of negotiation.
13:57
Speaker 3: They don't want, a bevy of new supply of labor
14:02
Speaker 3: to come in and compete with them. So like, yes. Uh,
14:06
Speaker 3: I mean, Franklin, I mean, those are, that's an interesting
14:09
Speaker 3: question at this point, the notion at the moment of
14:13
Speaker 3: creating a huge new federal workforce to do this or
14:19
Speaker 3: anything for anything is sort of beyond the pale of imagination.
14:24
Speaker 3: But it's a worthwhile thought experiment that I haven't considered,
14:28
Speaker 3: and definitely something that I should think about.
14:32
Speaker 2: Well, the reason I ask is because in the book,
14:35
Speaker 2: and it's another example I think is worth sharing, can
14:37
Speaker 2: you just talk about how quickly in the New Deal,
14:40
Speaker 2: a program for people out of work to begin work,
14:43
Speaker 2: how quickly it was stood up, and I think almost
14:46
Speaker 2: as importantly, what happened when it was stood down? What
14:49
Speaker 2: was the time horizon for some of these New Deal
14:51
Speaker 2: programs Uh, to get off the ground.
14:53
Speaker 3: Yeah. Months like the, the civilian conservation core, it's a
14:58
Speaker 3: matter of months for, you know, hundreds of thousands that
15:03
Speaker 3: the CWA came in together and something like some huge
15:07
Speaker 3: portion of the nation was hired, uh, under that program
15:12
Speaker 3: with it within less than a year, like something like
15:14
Speaker 3: 5% of the country. I mean, I mean, it was
15:16
Speaker 3: just incredibly fast. Um, And then, yeah, you're absolutely right.
15:23
Speaker 3: But Franklin Roosevelt also recognized these were temporary relief programs,
15:27
Speaker 3: wound them down quickly. And so certainly by the end
15:29
Speaker 3: of the Second World War, most of the alphabet soup
15:33
Speaker 3: of programs that we remember from seventh grade social studies
15:37
Speaker 3: had been undone.
15:39
Speaker 1: Yeah.
15:48
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Speaker 2: think that it's worth getting into the politics of this.
18:19
Speaker 2: The New Deal, both the creation of programs like Social Security,
18:23
Speaker 2: as well as the jobs programs and economic recovery programs
18:27
Speaker 2: that were stood up during the New Deal, to me
18:29
Speaker 2: have always represented the high watermark or a high watermark
18:33
Speaker 2: of what progressive governance can look like, what it means
18:39
Speaker 2: to have an active progressive government trying to quickly solve
18:43
Speaker 2: problems and produce broad-based economic relief and prosperity. And yet
18:50
Speaker 2: there's this strange phenomenon where whether it's your book or
18:54
Speaker 2: the abundance book that's gotten attention, it somehow has managed
18:58
Speaker 2: to find kind of our usual ideological groove. Just the
19:03
Speaker 2: other day, Elizabeth Warren gave a speech where she spoke
19:06
Speaker 2: in a pejorative way about the abundance agenda. And obviously
19:09
Speaker 2: your book is a separate kind of argument from that,
19:11
Speaker 2: but it's connected to it. You see a lot of
19:14
Speaker 2: people frame a debate as sort of left populist economics
19:18
Speaker 2: versus kind of reform oriented sort of pro-government reform agenda
19:24
Speaker 2: as being at odds with each other. And I'm wondering
19:27
Speaker 2: why you, what happened? Like, why do you think this
19:30
Speaker 2: has taken on sort of an ideological valence?
19:33
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think habit for the most part,
19:38
Speaker 3: like I, like I don't find much of it to
19:41
Speaker 3: be totally compelling. Yeah. You know, there's something cultural that happens.
19:48
Speaker 3: Like the moment, moments that you're talking about in the
19:52
Speaker 3: new deal, progressives really do have a cultural affinity for
20:00
Speaker 3: centralized power, right? Like you see a big public problem,
20:05
Speaker 3: like there aren't enough wires to keep these poor people
20:11
Speaker 3: in the Tennessee Valley, uh, above like really abject poverty.
20:18
Speaker 3: There isn't enough irrigation to stop the dust bowl. Um,
20:25
Speaker 3: you know, there isn't enough relief in big urban centers. Um,
20:31
Speaker 3: and so what you want to do is create these
20:33
Speaker 3: big centralized bureaucracies that are going to fix these problems. So,
20:37
Speaker 3: you know, there's a guy named Mike Strauss who runs the,
20:40
Speaker 3: I think it's Mike Strauss who runs the Bureau of Reclamation.
20:42
Speaker 3: Like it's a bureaucracy that's inside the department of interior.
20:46
Speaker 3: Like most Americans who aren't in agricultural places that depend
20:51
Speaker 3: on dams have never heard of that bureaucracy. Um, uh, he,
20:54
Speaker 3: he's succeeded by a guy named, I think Floyd Domini
20:58
Speaker 3: in the, you know, in the 1950s and sixties. Um, uh,
21:04
Speaker 3: they are figures who are a piece like Robert Moses,
21:09
Speaker 3: who runs the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, and David Lilienthal,
21:14
Speaker 3: who runs the TVA, and, you know, Austin Tobin, who
21:19
Speaker 3: runs the Port Authority in New York City. And, you know,
21:22
Speaker 3: you can, these sort of really powerful figures are just
21:26
Speaker 3: sort of run across America and they are generally revered.
21:31
Speaker 3: Now they wear, you know, they wear charcoal suits and
21:34
Speaker 3: fedoras and they cross their arms like this and they
21:38
Speaker 3: frown like the world, you know, like the, the, the, they,
21:40
Speaker 3: they hold the weight of the world. But, but generally
21:43
Speaker 3: Americans having seen what George Marshall did, uh, to, to defeat,
21:47
Speaker 3: you know, the, the, the Nazis and right, right. To
21:51
Speaker 3: just to make the world safe, like generally revered these figures. Um,
21:57
Speaker 3: and like they are, they are willing to accept their wisdom.
22:04
Speaker 3: And then something happens in the sixties and seventies. And, uh,
22:09
Speaker 3: it turns out we discover that like these guys aren't,
22:14
Speaker 3: you know, the wise sages that we presume them to
22:19
Speaker 3: be in all circumstances that they threw DDT on our
22:23
Speaker 3: crops and that caused birth defects that they, uh, they let,
22:27
Speaker 3: you know, pollution flow into the Cuyahoga river. So it's
22:31
Speaker 3: the lid on fire that they, did urban renewal and
22:34
Speaker 3: they did interstate programs that destroyed minority neighborhoods and that
22:38
Speaker 3: they sent us into Vietnam or Robert McNamara. Like, so
22:42
Speaker 3: by the time it gets to the seventies, like these
22:45
Speaker 3: guys are like generally seen as bad, like the power broker,
22:51
Speaker 3: which is the takedown of Robert Moses in New York
22:54
Speaker 3: city and reveals that this guy who had remade the
22:57
Speaker 3: landscape of New York city during between the thirties and
22:59
Speaker 3: the sixties had like strangled the city with interstates and
23:03
Speaker 3: like driven the cross Bronx expressway across a borough of
23:07
Speaker 3: New York city and like, you know, left it to
23:09
Speaker 3: be like just sort of a, the epitome of urban
23:12
Speaker 3: blight and despair. Like, like that was a, that book
23:17
Speaker 3: came out right during Watergate, right? Like it was like,
23:20
Speaker 3: it was just sort of, sort of a, a symbol
23:23
Speaker 3: of how the great establishment that had been vested with
23:27
Speaker 3: so much uh, we, we, as the American people had
23:33
Speaker 3: vested them with so much, uh, respect for all these
23:36
Speaker 3: decades was wrong. And like, you get to the seventies,
23:38
Speaker 3: like we get things like these people are, are epitomized
23:41
Speaker 3: by like boss hog, right? Like, I mean, like, like
23:43
Speaker 3: that's the view and we need to take them down
23:46
Speaker 3: so that you get all the cultural references, you know, like, uh,
23:49
Speaker 3: in network it's, you know, like I'm mad as hell
23:52
Speaker 3: and I, we're not going to take it anymore. Right. Like, like, like, um,
23:56
Speaker 3: that's the sort of the notion, or even that, that
23:58
Speaker 3: famous Apple ad from 1984 where, right, where they take
24:03
Speaker 3: a javelin and someone comes in and there's a bunch of,
24:06
Speaker 3: a bunch of Robert Moses, Richard Daly looking figures sort
24:11
Speaker 3: of speaking out into the audience, sort of controlling people.
24:15
Speaker 3: And someone comes in and throw, like that becomes the ethos.
24:18
Speaker 3: How are we going to break down the establishment? And
24:22
Speaker 3: that became the central sort of pillar of progressive thought.
24:28
Speaker 3: And that, downstream of that thinking became a whole series
24:34
Speaker 3: of legislative maneuvers designed to box in government. The Gulliver's
24:39
Speaker 3: Travels image, I considered that, or someone suggested that to
24:43
Speaker 3: me as for a cover image of my book, right?
24:46
Speaker 3: The sort of notion that government can't move, that you
24:54
Speaker 3: say you want to put up an electric transmission line
24:57
Speaker 3: that would connect clean power to the city. You can't
25:03
Speaker 3: do it. You want to build a high-speed rail line,
25:05
Speaker 3: you can't do it. You want to build more housing,
25:07
Speaker 3: you can't do it. Like, it seems to me that, like,
25:11
Speaker 3: the neo-Brandesians, left-liberal Elizabeth Warren, Lena Kahn world, like, I
25:18
Speaker 3: think that they're fundamentally sympathetic. They want to do that. And, like,
25:26
Speaker 3: I don't think that the abundance people... like don't think
25:30
Speaker 3: that we should take on monopolies. Right. So, so like it,
25:35
Speaker 3: it actually feels to me like this should be a
25:38
Speaker 3: topic on which we can all agree. And like just
25:43
Speaker 3: the sort of sense that we, uh, we, we were Democrats.
25:48
Speaker 3: So we're going to find stuff to, you know, circular
25:51
Speaker 3: firing squad and, and ever, but, but, but, but anyway, I, I,
25:57
Speaker 3: I don't, I, I, You probably have a better explanation
25:59
Speaker 3: for me than why we're fighting about this stuff.
26:02
Speaker 2: Well, I think part of it is a feeling that
26:06
Speaker 2: a lot of what politics is right now, it's defined
26:09
Speaker 2: by making sure you have the right enemies. And I
26:11
Speaker 2: don't say that in a pejorative way, right? Like people
26:14
Speaker 2: are critical of those who suggest that bureaucracy or progressive
26:18
Speaker 2: governance is the source of stymied clean energy projects when
26:21
Speaker 2: it's actually Republicans and corporate interference that plays a role
26:24
Speaker 2: as well. But also I think part of this is,
26:28
Speaker 2: it wasn't just a, um, a cultural reaction, uh, to
26:33
Speaker 2: the sort of best and brightest style suit wearing white men, uh,
26:37
Speaker 2: that made these decisions. It was a policy reaction. You know,
26:40
Speaker 2: I'm from Long Island. We have the Long Island expressway
26:43
Speaker 2: and the, uh, grand central parkway and, uh, and the, uh, um, sorry,
26:47
Speaker 2: which is start starts as the Northern state parkway through
26:50
Speaker 2: Long Island. And it was a kind of a fact
26:54
Speaker 2: about like kind of a trivia fact about the Northern
26:57
Speaker 2: state parkway that the overpasses were low because Robert Moses
27:02
Speaker 2: didn't want buses filled with black people to get to
27:05
Speaker 2: the beach. And then there are turns in that expressway
27:08
Speaker 2: because of the kind of personal egotistical interests of these men.
27:15
Speaker 2: And we're here in Los Angeles. The 101 is a
27:20
Speaker 2: scar that runs down the center of Hollywood and through
27:25
Speaker 2: the city around which the Value of the land went down, right?
27:29
Speaker 2: Like there's just all these implications for what happens when
27:33
Speaker 2: singular figures are empowered to make decisions because A, communities
27:37
Speaker 2: are unheard and B, they have their own biases that
27:40
Speaker 2: they bring to the table. Like I went to Lake,
27:43
Speaker 2: you go to Lake Mead or Lake Powell, you're like,
27:45
Speaker 2: how does this exist? How did they fill this canyon
27:49
Speaker 2: with water and nobody stopped them? I'm glad it's there.
27:51
Speaker 2: I had an enjoyable time on the boat, but what
27:53
Speaker 2: the fuck? This is crazy. So it is a little
27:56
Speaker 2: bit of a correct reaction to what happened.
28:00
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the great challenge that I feel
28:05
Speaker 3: like I'm facing now and that I would hope all
28:07
Speaker 3: progressives would engage in a really productive discussion about. Because clearly,
28:14
Speaker 3: we don't want to go back to the Robert Moses-
28:17
Speaker 3: Lloyd Domeney, Robert McNamara era where like singular figures could
28:25
Speaker 3: make decisions entirely on their own and without consideration of
28:32
Speaker 3: the effects on individual communities. Like that was bad news bears, right?
28:38
Speaker 3: Fair enough. We've now gone, I think to the other
28:42
Speaker 3: extreme where, uh, We've created all sorts of mechanisms for
28:50
Speaker 3: those communities that would otherwise have been bulldozed by the
28:54
Speaker 3: Robert Moses or Dominies or whomever to.
29:00
Speaker 2: Speak up.
29:00
Speaker 3: We've created environmental laws and historic preservation statutes and requirements
29:07
Speaker 3: for communities to have voices. And we've created rights of
29:11
Speaker 3: action in court. We've created all sorts of mechanisms. And now, like,
29:18
Speaker 3: we know that people are using bullshit excuses. Like, they
29:22
Speaker 3: don't want the housing to be put up near them.
29:26
Speaker 3: They're afraid that a black family is going to move
29:29
Speaker 3: in or a poor family is going to move into
29:31
Speaker 3: the apartments. So they say, I think that I once
29:35
Speaker 3: saw bald Eagle, right. Or right. Or they are afraid, uh, that,
29:40
Speaker 3: that the train line there is going to come and
29:44
Speaker 3: bifurcate their little neighborhood. So they create some sort of,
29:49
Speaker 3: I think this, this, this homeless historic, or I think
29:51
Speaker 3: that this is actually a Brownfield that there was, that
29:53
Speaker 3: there was, you know, oil and the right, like they
29:56
Speaker 3: create all sorts of barriers such that now, We can't
30:01
Speaker 3: build the things that we know that we need. Now,
30:05
Speaker 3: between these two extremes of allowing one like powerful dude
30:13
Speaker 3: to make the choices like unabated and on this other end,
30:18
Speaker 3: allowing anyone with objection to stop anything, it's gotta be
30:22
Speaker 3: some sort of process that allows everyone to have a
30:26
Speaker 3: voice and no one to have a veto. I don't
30:29
Speaker 3: know exactly how that would work, right? That's what I'm
30:33
Speaker 3: working on now. I'm trying to figure out how do
30:36
Speaker 3: corporations do this? Now, I was looking at the NEVI
30:41
Speaker 3: program at one point, and someone told me this story.
30:44
Speaker 3: It was sort of interesting. I was thinking about it
30:47
Speaker 3: just as a private sector example. When they were doing
30:51
Speaker 3: the NEVI program, Elon Musk had the supercharger program for Tesla.
30:58
Speaker 3: And already people were buying Tesla's not only because they
31:01
Speaker 3: liked Tesla's, but because if you bought a Tesla, there
31:04
Speaker 3: were already lots of superchargers all over the country. And
31:07
Speaker 3: the people who had inside Tesla, who had the supercharger program,
31:13
Speaker 3: like they were running those were like, well, we could
31:15
Speaker 3: license this to Ford and to the other companies. And
31:19
Speaker 3: we could get some of that $ 7. 5 billion. And that'd
31:23
Speaker 3: be like, that would significantly augment the, overall size of
31:27
Speaker 3: the EV market, maybe we should do it. The people
31:31
Speaker 3: inside Tesla who were selling Tesla cars were horrified that
31:35
Speaker 3: anyone would suggest it because, well, that was what they
31:38
Speaker 3: were selling their cars with, right?
31:39
Speaker 2: It was an advantage. It was an advantage for Tesla
31:42
Speaker 2: as a value proposition.
31:44
Speaker 1: Correct.
31:44
Speaker 3: So the question for Elon Musk as the CEO is,
31:47
Speaker 3: do I want to have a larger slice of a
31:50
Speaker 3: smaller pie or a smaller slice of a larger pie?
31:52
Speaker 3: That's a hard decision. And whatever he chooses, he's going
31:56
Speaker 3: to be pissing off some portion of his company, of
32:02
Speaker 3: his employees. But it's a hard decision. He could have
32:06
Speaker 3: come into Doge and said, I understand what this is like.
32:12
Speaker 3: I'm the CEO. I want to make it so when
32:15
Speaker 3: you are the head of NOAA, the National Oceanic The
32:22
Speaker 3: bureaucracy that is regulating offshore wind, animals, right, right, right.
32:27
Speaker 3: And you are faced with a dilemma, right, where you
32:31
Speaker 3: have some burden, where some people want to put offshore
32:38
Speaker 3: wind and some people are worried about the animals that
32:41
Speaker 3: are going to be interfered with, that you have more
32:45
Speaker 3: discretion to choose more expeditiously. between these choices, understanding that
32:50
Speaker 3: there are costs, that, you know, there are going to
32:52
Speaker 3: be some animals or some flora or fauna, like, I
32:56
Speaker 3: don't know what that, what- There are trade-offs in every policy.
32:58
Speaker 3: There are trade-offs, that you can make that choice more expeditiously.
33:03
Speaker 3: That would have been a useful thing for Doge to
33:06
Speaker 3: have done. Instead, what we know Elon did is that
33:09
Speaker 3: he took the approach in Doge that he took when
33:11
Speaker 3: he took over Twitter, just fire a bunch of people. less, less,
33:16
Speaker 3: less useful, uh, in the, but, but, but like there
33:20
Speaker 3: is like, there is like, that's something for us as
33:24
Speaker 3: progressives to think about. Are there ways that as we
33:28
Speaker 3: are thinking about the next time we are in office,
33:32
Speaker 3: that we can write legislation in ways that give, uh,
33:38
Speaker 3: more authority to people to make choices more expeditiously.
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Speaker 2: There's two other parts of this too, which is about
36:27
Speaker 2: the habit of government and how it works and about
36:32
Speaker 2: the people that are in charge. Because not only have
36:37
Speaker 2: our ability to do big projects slowed or stopped, they've
36:40
Speaker 2: also become far more expensive. And there's a lot of
36:43
Speaker 2: different reasons. And when people try to dig into what
36:45
Speaker 2: the causes are, it's actually kind of often hard to
36:48
Speaker 2: find exactly what it is because people will say, oh, well,
36:50
Speaker 2: it's too deferential to unions, but they've got unions in
36:53
Speaker 2: Spain or environmental protections. They have environmental protections in Italy,
36:57
Speaker 2: or it's because we're so overbuilt. They can build subways
37:00
Speaker 2: in Rome. And sometimes what it does seem to boil
37:04
Speaker 2: down to in part is a kind of habit and expertise.
37:08
Speaker 2: And I do wonder, part of this is like we've
37:10
Speaker 2: made being a city administrator or someone kind of in
37:15
Speaker 2: charge of parts of these bureaucracies just a less fulfilling
37:21
Speaker 2: and kind of empowered role. But that also means that
37:24
Speaker 2: We don't have kind of the people in place who
37:26
Speaker 2: kind of were the kinds of people that in the
37:29
Speaker 2: past might have gone into that work because they were
37:33
Speaker 2: excited about the possibility of using government to do good.
37:36
Speaker 2: And I do wonder how much of this is going
37:38
Speaker 2: to take, even if we had the right policies, a
37:40
Speaker 2: lot of time to get ourselves out of.
37:43
Speaker 3: So that may be true. I'm working, this is not
37:46
Speaker 3: in the book, but it's something that I'm working on now.
37:48
Speaker 3: And I've just been thinking about it for now a
37:51
Speaker 3: month or two. And it's on my mind perpetually. I
37:54
Speaker 3: can't exactly figure it out.
37:55
Speaker 2: Great.
37:57
Speaker 3: That's pitfall, you know? Okay. Keep going. Absolutely. There's a
38:02
Speaker 3: new line that's opened, a new railroad line that's opened
38:05
Speaker 3: between Boston and New Bedford, Massachusetts. New Bedford is a
38:09
Speaker 3: historically sort of a beaten down old industrial city. on
38:13
Speaker 3: the South coast of Massachusetts that has not had rail service.
38:16
Speaker 3: One of the few cities that has not been connected
38:17
Speaker 3: to Boston. And it took them 35 years, but they
38:20
Speaker 3: finally opened the, the rail line. And, uh, there was
38:24
Speaker 3: a meeting that I've heard about in 2007 where mass DOT,
38:28
Speaker 3: the department of transportation, uh, which would intended to build
38:31
Speaker 3: this line called a meeting of all the stakeholders who
38:34
Speaker 3: were involved. And they called a couple of Indian tribes
38:37
Speaker 3: and they called the Massachusetts environmental groups. They called the, uh,
38:43
Speaker 3: Army Corps of engineers who are responsible for water quality
38:47
Speaker 3: and they called the environmental protection agency. So it's a Massachusetts,
38:50
Speaker 3: it's called the meeting. They're sitting at the head, but
38:53
Speaker 3: they've got these two federal agencies. And one of the
38:55
Speaker 3: routes that was under consideration was a route that was
38:57
Speaker 3: most direct. And it went through the, uh, a swamp
39:01
Speaker 3: and a swamp that had vernal pools. I didn't know
39:03
Speaker 3: what a vernal pool, a vernal pool is a pool
39:05
Speaker 3: that only is wet during the spring. And they're important
39:09
Speaker 3: because you can, uh, turtles can lay eggs in the
39:12
Speaker 3: water during the spring, and they are then protected from
39:15
Speaker 3: predators in the water. And those turtles, in this case,
39:19
Speaker 3: the eastern box turtle, is endangered. And so those vernal
39:22
Speaker 3: pools are important ecologically. And the guy from the EPA
39:29
Speaker 3: is very worried about these vernal pools. And if you
39:31
Speaker 3: were to run this train through, and, um, this became,
39:36
Speaker 3: I learned like a real issue of contentious, the EPA
39:38
Speaker 3: really wants to protect these vernal pools and these, and
39:42
Speaker 3: these turtles. And like, I remember hearing the story for
39:46
Speaker 3: the first few times and people sort of rolling their
39:48
Speaker 3: eyes about the turtle guy and like, like, like really like,
39:51
Speaker 3: like these poor people in new Bedford don't have access
39:54
Speaker 3: to these great jobs in Boston. And like, it's going
39:57
Speaker 3: to be a much longer commute if you avoid this swamp.
40:00
Speaker 3: And like, there's sort of like a real frustration that
40:04
Speaker 3: like the EPA, are you really gonna like force these, like,
40:07
Speaker 3: like that's great housing for people in Boston who are
40:10
Speaker 3: starved for housing. Like, like, like how much are these
40:13
Speaker 3: turtles really worth. And then I began thinking about the
40:17
Speaker 3: guy from the EPA who's sitting there. Like, I think
40:19
Speaker 3: he's an older guy probably took the job at the EPA,
40:24
Speaker 3: maybe like not long after the power broker came out,
40:27
Speaker 3: like right, right in this age where like America has
40:30
Speaker 3: woken up to the degree to which the country has
40:34
Speaker 3: just totally destroyed much of the country's environment just to,
40:38
Speaker 3: you know, in every case we've chosen economic expediency over
40:42
Speaker 3: the environment, like just, just destroyed whole, you know, forests
40:47
Speaker 3: and deforest, just did terrible damage. And his, he'd taken
40:51
Speaker 3: this job and like probably like had joined the EPA
40:55
Speaker 3: because he was going to speak up for these animals
40:57
Speaker 3: who couldn't speak up for themselves. He was going to protect.
41:00
Speaker 2: Speak up for that turtle.
41:01
Speaker 3: He was, he was the turtle guy and he was
41:03
Speaker 3: proud of it. Right. Like, and he was going to
41:04
Speaker 3: stand up. Moreover, like, like he said at that meeting,
41:08
Speaker 3: if he had said, all right, I'll let you run,
41:11
Speaker 3: run that train line through my turtle habitat. Right. He'd
41:15
Speaker 3: gone back to the EPA and told his boss, like,
41:18
Speaker 3: I can only imagine that like they would have, what
41:20
Speaker 3: do you like? Our mission is to protect the, you
41:22
Speaker 3: can't just unilaterally. And then if news got out that
41:27
Speaker 3: the EPA had given up on their turtles, they would
41:30
Speaker 3: have been subject to a lawsuit from the friends of
41:31
Speaker 3: the wilderness who weren't right. Like, like there are a
41:34
Speaker 3: whole series of interventions that would have made it almost
41:37
Speaker 3: impossible for this turtle guy. to actually come to some
41:41
Speaker 3: sort of collaborative solution with the Massachusetts transportation folks who
41:47
Speaker 3: want to do it. Now, there probably was some way
41:49
Speaker 3: to fix it where he could have said, listen, I'll
41:52
Speaker 3: let you take this little portion of the turtle habitat
41:56
Speaker 3: if you buy me a bunch of private land and
41:58
Speaker 3: we'll make that a new turtle, right? That's why things
42:01
Speaker 3: are so expensive here, right? Is that we will buy
42:05
Speaker 3: it off, right? Like why are things expensive in the U.S.?
42:07
Speaker 3: It's because... each time you find a barrier, there is
42:11
Speaker 3: a way to have it all, but it's, it's expensive, right? Like, like, Oh,
42:16
Speaker 3: there's an old Indian burial ground. We need to avoid that.
42:20
Speaker 3: Or we need to properly move the, uh, move the, the,
42:25
Speaker 3: the site to a, to a, have it rebury. I mean,
42:28
Speaker 3: there are all sorts of things that we are trying
42:31
Speaker 3: to be conscious of. We're not making trade-offs. Um, And
42:36
Speaker 3: we don't have a great system for that. But between
42:40
Speaker 3: just allowing Robert Moses to run rampant through the South
42:44
Speaker 3: Bronx and destroy a borough of New York City, and
42:48
Speaker 3: on the other hand, doing nothing so that we are
42:52
Speaker 3: millions and millions of units short of housing and unable
42:56
Speaker 3: to take advantage of the clean energy revolution so that
42:59
Speaker 3: we have more affordable, clean electricity. And the Acela train
43:04
Speaker 3: is you know, running at a third the pace of
43:09
Speaker 3: the TGV and running between Paris and, you know, we're
43:12
Speaker 3: way behind China and Japan. I mean, like, we can
43:16
Speaker 3: get this stuff going, but at root, this is a
43:19
Speaker 3: question of are we willing to make the trade-offs and
43:23
Speaker 3: are we willing to create systems that allow us to
43:26
Speaker 3: do that?
43:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like part of what you're circling is
43:30
Speaker 2: the idea that people need to have their voice but
43:32
Speaker 2: not a veto and that at different points along their way,
43:35
Speaker 2: there needs to be individuals empowered to make final decisions.
43:39
Speaker 2: Maybe not one person at the top, but individuals making decisions.
43:42
Speaker 2: Here in Los Angeles right now, there was this debate
43:45
Speaker 2: in the city council. A couple years ago, Los Angeles
43:49
Speaker 2: passed Measure ULA. I don't know how familiar you are
43:52
Speaker 2: with this, but it was a transfer tax for when
43:56
Speaker 2: properties over a certain amount were sold. Roughly, I'm going
43:59
Speaker 2: to get the number slightly wrong, but it's like a
44:01
Speaker 2: a roughly 4%. There's a tax that kicks in at
44:05
Speaker 2: $ 5 million, a tax that kicks in at $ 10 million.
44:08
Speaker 2: I think it's about roughly 4% and then 5%. But
44:12
Speaker 2: it turns out it also applied, it was called the
44:13
Speaker 2: mansion tax, but also applied to multifamily apartment buildings. And
44:19
Speaker 2: so a lot of researchers looked at the data and
44:22
Speaker 2: they said it is pretty clear that the application of
44:27
Speaker 2: the tax to new apartment buildings has probably cost the
44:31
Speaker 2: city far more in affordable housing units than the revenue
44:35
Speaker 2: has allowed the city to build. And so in the
44:38
Speaker 2: city council, there was a proposal. The proposal was to
44:40
Speaker 2: delay the tax on new family apartment, new apartment buildings
44:47
Speaker 2: that have been constructed in the last 15 years. And
44:51
Speaker 2: it would cut revenue that the city wants and needs
44:54
Speaker 2: by 8%. That's a trade-off, right? In order to allow
44:59
Speaker 2: the construction of multifamily apartment buildings, you would lose 8%
45:02
Speaker 2: of revenue on what the tax had been collecting. An
45:06
Speaker 2: extremely contentious debate. And it is now, as of right now,
45:09
Speaker 2: tabled because it would need to be passed by the
45:12
Speaker 2: city council so that it could be put to a
45:14
Speaker 2: vote by the city in order to be ratified as
45:18
Speaker 2: a citywide ballot measure. And the amount of consternation in
45:22
Speaker 2: both directions, it is a gift to developers. The infighting
45:26
Speaker 2: about it has basically left Los Angeles, kind of where
45:29
Speaker 2: it is right now, with a measure designed to create
45:32
Speaker 2: more affordable housing, in all likelihood, preventing the construction of
45:36
Speaker 2: vast amounts of affordable housing. And there are so many
45:40
Speaker 2: people who want to fix this, but they live in
45:42
Speaker 2: the system that they are in. And forget passing a
45:46
Speaker 2: small reform like this. The system, even if everybody involved
45:51
Speaker 2: wanted to have a version of what you're describing with
45:53
Speaker 2: a person who could be empowered at some level to
45:56
Speaker 2: address some of this, The system itself now has so
45:59
Speaker 2: many points of failure that the vetoes that exist would
46:02
Speaker 2: prevent that from happening. And I just don't know how
46:04
Speaker 2: we get out of this kind of doom loop.
46:07
Speaker 3: I mean, what's so interesting to me, I hear that.
46:11
Speaker 3: And like, certainly you feel that on the federal level
46:15
Speaker 3: as well, right? Like how, I mean, it feels super
46:18
Speaker 3: weird to me to be a progressive who sees what
46:22
Speaker 3: Donald Trump is doing and like finds it horrifying and
46:27
Speaker 3: And then it's like writing on his little computer, like,
46:31
Speaker 3: I think that we should give the federal government more
46:33
Speaker 3: power and more discretion to make decisions. Like, I hear
46:36
Speaker 3: myself seeing what's happening. Like, I hear what I'm saying
46:39
Speaker 3: and I can hear people being like, what the fuck
46:41
Speaker 3: are you talking about? Like, the guy's like, look what
46:44
Speaker 3: he's doing in Minnesota. Like, what do you mean you
46:45
Speaker 3: want to give more discretion to the federal government? And
46:50
Speaker 3: of course, like, my answer is like, you know, in
46:53
Speaker 3: order to have more faith in government, you need to
46:56
Speaker 3: see that government works. And like, so like in the
47:01
Speaker 3: scheme of things, the reason that we have Trump is
47:06
Speaker 3: because people have seen government not work. So they went
47:09
Speaker 3: to a, like, you know, an orange madman to like,
47:13
Speaker 3: to fix things, right? Like, like the worst things got,
47:16
Speaker 3: like they finally just wanted someone to break all the rules.
47:19
Speaker 2: Or another, like people just, given how little government changes
47:23
Speaker 2: or does, they don't really think of government having a
47:25
Speaker 2: big impact in their lives. And so this feels like
47:27
Speaker 2: a TV show.
47:29
Speaker 3: But the thing that I do say, which I hope
47:32
Speaker 3: provides some sort of comfort, you know, when the progressive
47:35
Speaker 3: movement was born at the, through the turn of the
47:38
Speaker 3: 20th century, it was at a moment when the federal
47:40
Speaker 3: government was small, when almost everything felt broken. Like the,
47:45
Speaker 3: there were trusts and like railroads and steel barons and like, like,
47:51
Speaker 3: private industry was huge and government like was not built
47:54
Speaker 3: to handle it government was corrupt like like you know
47:58
Speaker 3: like the federal government was like the u.s postal service
48:00
Speaker 3: and like a really corrupt pension system for people who
48:04
Speaker 3: like hadn't fought in the civil war but were collecting
48:06
Speaker 3: pensions like it was a it was a mess and
48:09
Speaker 3: people realized that and the progressive movement was born essentially
48:12
Speaker 3: to say like we've got all this sort of scientific
48:14
Speaker 3: knowledge we know that like we need better sanitation systems
48:18
Speaker 3: and transportation systems and electricity systems and regulatory systems. And
48:23
Speaker 3: like we need something better. And so like from this
48:26
Speaker 3: like mishmash of incompetent bureaucracy, like we created what became
48:32
Speaker 3: the new deal. Like there's no way in like 1906
48:36
Speaker 3: you could have imagined the breadth and depth of the
48:40
Speaker 3: bureaucracy that was the new deal or that existed in
48:43
Speaker 3: the 1950s, let alone like Robert Moses and the Triborough
48:47
Speaker 3: Bridge or the Tennessee Valley Authority. Like the idea that
48:50
Speaker 3: government bureaucracy could be this competent, efficient, like powerful, or
48:55
Speaker 3: that like Robert Moses could be unimpeachable, right? Like to
48:59
Speaker 3: think that in 19, you know, in the first decade
49:02
Speaker 3: of the 20th century, there would eventually be the man
49:04
Speaker 3: that Robert Caro would describe, you know, in the 1950s
49:09
Speaker 3: as like this, this, I mean, this powerful 50 years later, unimaginable.
49:16
Speaker 3: To read The Power Broker in 1973, 74, and this
49:22
Speaker 3: sort of idea of an establishment figure who's so unimpeachable, who,
49:26
Speaker 3: you know, who Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman and the
49:30
Speaker 3: Chicago 7, like when they were protesting these sorts of
49:34
Speaker 3: characters on the outside of the 1968 election, DNC and
49:37
Speaker 3: like talking about the man and the establishment and, you know,
49:41
Speaker 3: up against the wall, motherfucker. And right. Like this, this
49:44
Speaker 3: sort of notion in the port here on statement and see, right.
49:48
Speaker 3: Like this sort of notion that there was this, uh,
49:50
Speaker 3: that this establishment, uh, uh, that, that sort of hovered
49:54
Speaker 3: over American life and that was impossibly large and beyond our, uh,
50:00
Speaker 3: beyond anyone's control. Um, that, that, that, that, powerful institution
50:07
Speaker 3: would 50 years later, like be completely incompetent, but like
50:13
Speaker 3: there's no establishment, right? Like, like, like, like we can't,
50:16
Speaker 3: we can't build any, we can't build housing. We can't
50:20
Speaker 3: build clean energy lines. We like, like think of the
50:22
Speaker 3: things that we can't do and there's no one to
50:24
Speaker 3: turn to. Like we go through these periods in American
50:28
Speaker 3: life where the sort of the broader structure of power
50:30
Speaker 3: just completely changes. So right now, It feels like nothing
50:35
Speaker 3: can get done. There's no one to turn to. There's
50:37
Speaker 3: no way to make decisions. I think that 20, 30
50:41
Speaker 3: years from now, we will have completely rebuilt some sort
50:45
Speaker 3: of governing mechanism that makes it possible for us to
50:48
Speaker 3: do things. I don't know exactly how it's going to happen,
50:51
Speaker 3: but I feel pretty confident. People aren't happy with this.
50:56
Speaker 3: They're not going to be happy with what we've got now.
50:59
Speaker 3: And we will figure out a series of ways organically
51:03
Speaker 3: through reforms, like ideas are popping, like the fact that
51:07
Speaker 3: Ezra and Derek's book did well and Yoni Applebaum has
51:10
Speaker 3: a book and Jen Polka has a book and Nick
51:13
Speaker 3: Bagley's coming out. There's lots of literature coming out.
51:17
Speaker 2: The books will save us.
51:18
Speaker 3: The books will save, there you go. The books will
51:20
Speaker 3: save us.
51:20
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53:39
Speaker 2: That's stamps.com, code PSA. It's interesting because then, The other
53:47
Speaker 2: side of this is an effective governing bureaucracy, effective institutions.
53:52
Speaker 2: Those are not an end. They're a means to an end.
53:55
Speaker 2: And part of why the New Deal was able to
53:59
Speaker 2: be stood up so quickly is because a Democratic Party
54:02
Speaker 2: had a vision for what the role of government needed
54:04
Speaker 2: to be in an emergency. And that built not only
54:07
Speaker 2: public enthusiasm and legitimacy and support, it created a phalanx
54:11
Speaker 2: of people at every level who wanted to be a
54:14
Speaker 2: part of it. Intellectuals, experts... managers, all the way down
54:18
Speaker 2: to people who just wanted to work as part of these,
54:22
Speaker 2: or needed work, by the way, as well. But that
54:25
Speaker 2: momentum around the goal, the mission of what the government
54:28
Speaker 2: was meant to do, made it more possible for the
54:31
Speaker 2: government to be effective. How much of what we're dealing
54:34
Speaker 2: with here is a need for a democratic party, a
54:39
Speaker 2: progressive movement, to have a clear understanding of what the
54:42
Speaker 2: goal is, whether it's high-speed rail or wind or a
54:47
Speaker 2: better education system or better healthcare system? Like how much
54:49
Speaker 2: of this could follow a kind of broader, more enthusiastic
54:53
Speaker 2: democratic mission?
54:56
Speaker 3: I think mission is a huge part of it. I
54:58
Speaker 3: also think like to the point you made earlier, lots
55:03
Speaker 3: of people graduate from college and imagine that they're going
55:07
Speaker 3: to go into public service, take a job at one
55:10
Speaker 3: of these agencies and like do great things. I think
55:13
Speaker 3: that if you had gone to engineering school in the
55:18
Speaker 3: 1940s and gotten a job as a Moses man, uh, inside,
55:23
Speaker 3: you know, the Triborough bridge and tunnel authority in New
55:25
Speaker 3: York and like spent years working for Bob Moses, who
55:29
Speaker 3: was imperious as a boss, but like gave you a
55:32
Speaker 3: great deal of, you know, freedom to design parks and
55:36
Speaker 3: like you could, and your retirement, like you probably wouldn't
55:39
Speaker 3: have made as much if you'd gone to a, private
55:43
Speaker 3: engineering firm, but you could show your grandchildren, like I
55:45
Speaker 3: built that playground or I, you know, designed that bridge
55:49
Speaker 3: or what, like, like that would have been very satisfying.
55:51
Speaker 3: I think that people today who go into public service
55:54
Speaker 3: and go work at a, what seems like a very
55:57
Speaker 3: important bureaucracy spend their days frightened. They're frightened that they're
56:01
Speaker 3: going to get their boss in trouble. They're frightened that
56:04
Speaker 3: they're going to get, you know, their boss is going
56:05
Speaker 3: to yell that by an appropriator because they did something
56:08
Speaker 3: wrong or that they're going to, they're going to make
56:10
Speaker 3: a decision that's going to get them subject to a
56:12
Speaker 3: NEPA lawsuit or the right that the, that the, someone
56:15
Speaker 3: in the office of management and budget is going to
56:18
Speaker 3: screw or that they don't have real authority to make
56:22
Speaker 3: the changes that they want to do. And they come
56:24
Speaker 3: out after a bunch of years and like, I was
56:26
Speaker 3: just pushing paper around. Like I wasn't really given the
56:29
Speaker 3: sort of a leash to make the positive change that
56:34
Speaker 3: I wanted to do. I think like that is, an
56:38
Speaker 3: extension of the changes we made after the Robert Moses
56:41
Speaker 3: era and that we overdid. I think we want to
56:44
Speaker 3: re-empower people who go into public service to be able
56:48
Speaker 3: to make those sorts of changes. And you'll get different
56:51
Speaker 3: kinds of people who go into service that way. We're
56:54
Speaker 3: going to make mistakes. Like government is going to make mistakes.
56:57
Speaker 3: It's going to be controversial. Like people are not going
56:59
Speaker 3: to like it, uh, in all cases. But like, I mean,
57:02
Speaker 3: I think that there's like, there's so many things that
57:05
Speaker 3: we need to do and that only government can do. Um,
57:08
Speaker 3: but I, I think that a very hopeful, I think
57:11
Speaker 3: it's a very hopeful moment for all that, that, that
57:13
Speaker 3: we're all sort of aghast at what's happening in Washington
57:17
Speaker 3: right now. That's sort of the level of potential is
57:19
Speaker 3: really remarkable. Yeah, I do.
57:22
Speaker 2: It's interesting cause I, you know, I read your piece
57:24
Speaker 2: on sort of lessons from the way Trump operates and,
57:27
Speaker 2: and I feel the same conflict that you described there
57:30
Speaker 2: and describe here. Um, But there is some part of
57:34
Speaker 2: me that takes from it that one thing we need
57:36
Speaker 2: elected officials to do sometimes is to tell the lawyers
57:39
Speaker 2: to fuck off and just say, no, no, fuck off.
57:43
Speaker 2: And we're going to try this. We're going to push
57:44
Speaker 2: the bounds a little bit and then get stopped a
57:46
Speaker 2: little more frequently. Because I do think that part of
57:48
Speaker 2: this is a style of consensus leadership, a kind of
57:55
Speaker 2: like front of the classroom style of Democrat that doesn't
57:59
Speaker 2: want to seem like they're breaking the rules, but I
58:02
Speaker 2: say that, I think, am I describing basically something that
58:06
Speaker 2: if it were towards a policy goal I would hate,
58:08
Speaker 2: I'd be disgusted by. But I wonder if there was
58:10
Speaker 2: something in the middle here where we need to somehow,
58:14
Speaker 2: you know, we have to sometimes, we need to go
58:16
Speaker 2: out to want to leave the house. You know, we
58:17
Speaker 2: have to like start acting as though we live in
58:19
Speaker 2: a world in which things can happen, pretend as if
58:23
Speaker 2: things can happen, and then suddenly they might.
58:25
Speaker 3: I mean, yes, and I've heard that several, you know,
58:28
Speaker 3: people saying, you know, in order to, to, uh, plan
58:35
Speaker 3: a new subway line. We need to study the alternatives.
58:38
Speaker 3: How many do we really need to study? Like we
58:40
Speaker 3: know in the end that we're not going to dig
58:43
Speaker 3: up this particular street. We're not going to go, you know,
58:46
Speaker 3: we're not going to dig up downtown. Right. So, so like,
58:49
Speaker 3: I understand that that is a theoretically a possibility, but
58:53
Speaker 3: we're not going to spend a hundred thousand dollars doing
58:56
Speaker 3: and six months looking at you know, which streets in
59:00
Speaker 3: which order we would dig up to do that possibility.
59:03
Speaker 3: We're just going to set it aside. And we're actually
59:05
Speaker 3: only going to study these three alternatives, right? Like, that
59:08
Speaker 3: was something that someone maybe would sue saying, well, you
59:11
Speaker 3: didn't look at all the alternatives, but we could expedite that, right?
59:16
Speaker 3: Like there's an example of where a bureaucrat could tell
59:21
Speaker 3: a lawyer to F off, right? Maybe there's a mild
59:25
Speaker 3: example of where something like that, yeah, I think probably
59:29
Speaker 3: could work. and we don't do it.
59:30
Speaker 2: Are there any Democratic politicians that you think are saying
59:33
Speaker 2: interesting or smart things about how this can work? Are
59:38
Speaker 2: there places where you think people are pushing this forward
59:41
Speaker 2: and pointing to a way for how we make progressive
59:44
Speaker 2: governing work again?
59:46
Speaker 3: I'm going to say yes. You want me to name
59:50
Speaker 3: a bunch of politicians? I just think that lots of them,
59:54
Speaker 3: the new Dems, I mean, I think Dems left, right,
59:58
Speaker 3: and center are trying to do this. Uh, you're gonna, you're,
1:00:02
Speaker 3: you're putting me on the spot here.
1:00:03
Speaker 2: Uh, well, mom Donnie, would you say mom Donnie's doing it?
1:00:06
Speaker 3: I think mom Donnie is trying to do it. Yeah,
1:00:08
Speaker 3: I agree.
1:00:09
Speaker 2: I agree with that. Yeah.
1:00:10
Speaker 3: Yeah. I, I've absolutely, I mean, you know, I think
1:00:14
Speaker 3: like the way that, that ROM has looked at like
1:00:18
Speaker 3: what's happening in schools, right? Like there's, there's sort of
1:00:21
Speaker 3: an obvious thing. Like we've been having this stale conversation
1:00:24
Speaker 3: about charters and vouchers and, uh, bathrooms and, and like, like,
1:00:28
Speaker 3: and he's like, he's focused on like, what are kids,
1:00:31
Speaker 3: how are kids learning in schools? Like, like that's the
1:00:34
Speaker 3: stuff that matters. That feels to me like trying to
1:00:38
Speaker 3: push through the sort of arcane BS that we tend
1:00:42
Speaker 3: to talk about in our political dialogue. I don't know
1:00:45
Speaker 3: if it's, if it's right in line with this conversation,
1:00:48
Speaker 3: but like that feels like a real conversation. Uh, I mean,
1:00:53
Speaker 3: you know, Shapiro's, identity nationally at the moment feels like
1:00:57
Speaker 3: it's really tied up in that 95.
1:00:59
Speaker 2: He got that thing up so fucking quick. That was cool.
1:01:01
Speaker 3: That was. I like that. And I feel like Newsom
1:01:03
Speaker 3: has a similar story.
1:01:04
Speaker 2: He's going to build something even faster. He's not going
1:01:06
Speaker 2: to get, he's not going to get, he's not going
1:01:07
Speaker 2: to lose in the road competition to Shapiro.
1:01:10
Speaker 3: Whitmer, fix the, I mean, anyway. They're trying. They're trying, yeah. Everyone,
1:01:15
Speaker 3: I think people are catching on to this stuff. And
1:01:21
Speaker 3: I do hope that this becomes, like, I really do
1:01:24
Speaker 3: hope that this conversation can be a way for, uh,
1:01:29
Speaker 3: for people on the left and the, you know, sort
1:01:33
Speaker 3: of in the more progressive circles and more moderate circles
1:01:39
Speaker 3: to come together, you know, um, those, you know, if I'm,
1:01:44
Speaker 3: I'm not a single payer guy, but if I were
1:01:47
Speaker 3: a single payer person, I would think to get there,
1:01:55
Speaker 3: you have to believe that people will need to have
1:02:00
Speaker 3: faith that government is going to administer healthcare better than
1:02:05
Speaker 3: Aetna or CVS or whoever, Blue Cross Blue Shield, like
1:02:10
Speaker 3: whoever you're right. And like right now, like is your,
1:02:15
Speaker 3: is your experience with government such that like you feel
1:02:18
Speaker 3: like you go into the DMV and like, that's a
1:02:21
Speaker 3: happy place. Like, like, Like, are, are those the people
1:02:24
Speaker 3: that you trust to do things, uh, in an expeditious way?
1:02:30
Speaker 3: And like, like, like, you know, the Rhode Island DMV,
1:02:34
Speaker 3: I'm from Rhode Island. I love those guys. Like I, my,
1:02:37
Speaker 3: my license has come up for renewal and I just
1:02:39
Speaker 3: want to put that on the record. But, uh, but
1:02:42
Speaker 3: like generally I, I, I, I, I'm not sure that
1:02:44
Speaker 3: people have the experience in seeing like if, if, if
1:02:49
Speaker 3: these guys can't successfully. accomplish the things that are already
1:02:55
Speaker 3: within their mandate? Why are we going to expand their mandate?
1:03:00
Speaker 3: So let's get these things done and then let's have
1:03:02
Speaker 3: a discussion about whether government bureaucracies are better poised to
1:03:07
Speaker 3: accomplish for ordinary people the things that they can't attain
1:03:12
Speaker 3: for themselves in the current environment.
1:03:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also think part of it too is having
1:03:16
Speaker 2: the confidence and a worldview in which you can fight
1:03:20
Speaker 2: Trump's efforts to undermine the government without viewing it as
1:03:23
Speaker 2: a concession to, in another conversation, talk about government's failures,
1:03:29
Speaker 2: ways it needs to improve, ways you could save money.
1:03:33
Speaker 2: And I think part of this too is there's a
1:03:35
Speaker 2: credibility gap. Mamdani this week, obviously he's the socialist menace
1:03:42
Speaker 2: that's going to drive the billionaires to Florida, I suppose.
1:03:45
Speaker 2: But then at the same time, he's signing an executive
1:03:47
Speaker 2: order to find ways for government to save money. And
1:03:51
Speaker 2: he has the kind of credibility to do that because
1:03:53
Speaker 2: he has the trust over here. And I sometimes do
1:03:55
Speaker 2: think that mainstream Democrats, because they lack that kind of
1:03:58
Speaker 2: clear mission of what they're trying to achieve, sometimes are
1:04:01
Speaker 2: a bit squeamish about saying something that might sound like
1:04:04
Speaker 2: they're inviting a criticism from the left, which is, I think,
1:04:06
Speaker 2: a part of our problem, our kind of soft democratic
1:04:14
Speaker 2: establishment does not have the kind of aggressive toughness that
1:04:19
Speaker 2: might make it more palatable to have them kind of
1:04:20
Speaker 2: pick some fights.
1:04:21
Speaker 1: I don't know.
1:04:22
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't, I don't like calling it the establishment.
1:04:25
Speaker 3: The establishment to me is like this old thing. Like
1:04:28
Speaker 3: there is no democratic establishment. We've got, we've got, we've
1:04:30
Speaker 3: got sort of.
1:04:31
Speaker 2: Well, it's all the mainstream center left democratic officials would
1:04:35
Speaker 2: be the group that people might be talking about that. Um,
1:04:38
Speaker 2: I think sometimes feel a little bit unsure of what,
1:04:40
Speaker 2: of who they're supposed to be.
1:04:42
Speaker 3: Okay. Well, take out the word establishment and I will,
1:04:46
Speaker 3: and we're on the same page.
1:04:47
Speaker 2: Oh, great. And that's a perfect place to leave it.
1:04:49
Speaker 3: Let's leave it there.
1:04:49
Speaker 2: Mark Dongleman, thank you so much for talking to me.
1:04:51
Speaker 2: I genuinely really enjoyed the book. It is called Why
1:04:54
Speaker 2: Nothing Works, Who Killed Progress and How to Bring It Back.
1:04:57
Speaker 2: I think anybody who has either dipped into the abundance
1:05:00
Speaker 2: discourse or decided to avoid it, I think it's a
1:05:02
Speaker 2: good history to help you through it, even though I
1:05:04
Speaker 2: will say, and I will say it to your face
1:05:05
Speaker 2: because I saw it on the pod. How many fucking
1:05:07
Speaker 2: times are you going to hammer the Hamiltonian Jefferson?
1:05:09
Speaker 1: We're smart people.
1:05:10
Speaker 2: We're in the book. You got us.
1:05:11
Speaker 3: You got us.
1:05:12
Speaker 2: Stop selling us so fucking hard.
1:05:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, sometimes I got confused, so I was just
1:05:17
Speaker 3: guiding myself.
1:05:19
Speaker 2: But thank you so much.
1:05:19
Speaker 3: Thanks.
1:05:22
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