The Message You Were Waiting For?

Democrats lost in 2024 because they supposedly didn’t have the right message. Canadian philosophy professor Joseph Heath offers the message Americans are waiting for.

Ever since the New Deal, Democrats have been the party of large-scale improvements: rural electrification, Social Security and Medicare and promises of true universal health care, high speed rail, green energy and free public college. Bernie Sanders showed that these provisions poll high, even among Republicans.

So, how did Trump win? By validating the sense that the system is not working for most Americans. The system really is broken. But Trump’s “solutions” are guaranteed to break it even more.

Heath notes that the U.S. government takes decades to accomplish even simple administrative tasks. Republicans often identify the solution as “deregulation”.

Regulations as currently implemented are a problem. Bill Maher had a running feature on his show about the solar panels he installed on his roof. Red tape delayed them actually being switched on for 1,131 days!

In 2008, California voted to build high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco, planned to open in 2020. It was blocked by endless barriers, including from environmentalists who should have supported it.

But Heath offers a different solution than deregulation: giving public officials the authority to use their judgment to get things done. Heath notes: “Public officials in the United States are typically obliged to adopt a highly legalistic and punitive enforcement style, which in turn generates counterproductive adversarialism. U.S. companies routinely hire lawyers to deal with regulatory compliance work that in other countries is handled by engineers or managers.”

Heath gave this example: In Sweden a person on public assistance can ask his case worker for a supplemental payment in case of a large, unexpected expense. The case worker can use her judgment to decide whether the request is reasonable.

In the U.S., it is all about rules. A family on public assistance may suddenly find themselves homeless when a landlord does a “renoviction.” There is no way to get a one-time lump sum allocation for a deposit on a new apartment. The government ends up paying more to house them in a hotel because of following a rule instead of good sense.

A rule-based system is all about fine grained detail and lots of lawyers. Decisions are made because they are most easily defended in court, rather than what is best for all parties.

One model Heath offers is the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission – a “tribunal” that mediates disputes between employers and OSHA. Cases are resolved without courts.

For decades the Environmental Protection Agency operated under the “Chevron deference,” which allowed it wide latitude in resolving environmental problems. The Trump Supreme Court just killed that. But Congress could restore that authority.

Trump is also trying to convert government workers to political appointees. We should go in the opposite direction. Except for a few Constitutionally mandated appointments, the Civil Service system should hire qualified talent, not cronies.

It is hard to remember this, but before Nixon and Reagan, trust in government was high. It reined in corporate corruption, won WWII and gave us massive infrastructure and benefits.

Heath’s central point: Don’t destroy our government administrative infrastructure. Strengthen and improve it. Americans are rightly frustrated by their interactions with government officials and agencies. The Republican answer is to fire people and cut budgets. If you don’t like long waits dealing with the planning department, the DMV or IRS, how does it help to fire the agents who provide service?

Heath says that we can have great things if we build a better administrative infrastructure. There are NIMBYs in both parties who happily make it difficult to build new housing or transportation infrastructure. Some are elitists who don’t want new construction near them. Some think they are environmentalists. But endless delays don’t solve housing, transportation or environmental problems.

A good administrator can listen to all parties, then expedite a fair solution. The Democrats get it right with the big, promised goodies. All they need to win is to promise making government cuts through all of the annoying delays, and efficiently delivering these necessary services.