Beyond partisan deadlock, there’s a nation in search of ‘can do’ democracy

Campaign 2024 is just getting underway, but President Biden already has framed it as a fight to save American democracy. That’s true no matter who wins the Republican presidential nomination.

If it’s Donald Trump, the threat to democracy is obvious. Having already instigated one failed coup attempt, he won’t hesitate to reject the voters’ verdict if he’s defeated again in November.

And if he wins, Trump has vowed to sic the Justice Department on his political enemies and pardon the Jan. 6 rioters, defining treason down for future insurrectionists.

Even a Biden victory, though, would only be a reprieve from our deeper dilemma: Public confidence in democracy is cratering.

Last week, the Gallup Organization reported that the number of Americans who say they are satisfied with the way our democracy is working has sunk to a record low of 28 percent.

Such public alienation provides fertile soil for Trump’s cynical cultivation of “deep state” paranoia among right-wing populists. Outside the Trump cult, however, Americans seem more upset about the atrophy of the government’s power to help them solve their problems.

This institutional impotence confronts Democrats with an inescapable dilemma. As believers in an active government, they need to prove to skeptical voters that they can make it more responsive and effective. But that will require facing down important party constituencies, such as public sector unions and progressive activists more passionate about making government bigger than better.

Why does U.S. democracy seem so broken? One answer comes from Philip Howard, a lawyer and author whose books grapple with the causes of today’s public sector dysfunction.   

In his latest, “Everyday Freedom,” Howard cites the buildup since the 1960s of laws and rules that were intended to ensure procedural fairness, but in practice have chipped away at officials’ authority to do their jobs.  

Modern law, he says, has created “an elaborate precautionary system aimed at precluding human error.” Public officials have learned it’s safer to hide behind highly prescriptive laws and regulations than to risk using their judgment, moral intuition and common sense to solve public problems.

No government can codify the “correct” answers to life’s myriad problems and puzzles. Citizens have conflicting interests and demands. Public authorities are hired to reconcile those interests and make reasonable trade-offs that weigh individual claims against the common good.

But instead of protecting individual rights, modern laws have weaponized them to block such compromises, says Howard. “America is suffering from a crisis of human disempowerment.”

He offers many examples: Classroom teachers who lack authority to deal with disruptive students; police departments that can’t fire or disciple rogue cops because of union contracts; environmental reviews that create multiple veto points for opponents to endlessly delay the issuing of permits to upgrade the nation’s energy and other infrastructure.

To his list, I’d add larger systemic failures that leave frustrated citizens wondering whether they’re stuck with a “can’t do” government forever.

A dramatic example is the chaos on our southern border. There were nearly 250,000 illegal crossings in December, a one-month record. U.S. authorities have released more than 2.3 million migrants at the border since President Biden took office three years ago.

The federal government’s chronic failure to secure the border, enforce laws against hiring illegal aliens and welcome more willing workers through legal channels reflects badly on our country’s democratic competence.

The spread of massive homeless encampments in our major metros also is emblematic of the government’s inability to deliver on its fundamental responsibility to provide public order and safety. Last year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that 650,000 people were homeless.

This is partly a housing crisis, an economic crisis and a mental health crisis. Most shamefully, in the name of individual rights and “freedom,” our society has dumped hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people, many of whom can’t take care of themselves, into our city streets and parks.

Another example is the states’ failure to modernize America’s outdated K-12 public school system. We’re stuck with an early 20th century model that offers one-size-fits-all schools micromanaged by district bureaucrats whose hands are tied by rigid union contracts.

Our legacy public school systems are failing many Black and brown students in low-income communities. Chicago, for example, spends $18,000 a year per student yet only 15 percent of high school students rate as proficient or better at reading and 14 percent at math.

U.S. students in supposedly “good” suburban schools aren’t hitting it out of the park, either. The latest international comparison of student achievement ranks them 28th in math proficiency.

Whereas Howard’s books focus on the substitution of rules and legal processes for human judgment, these three examples point to new political dynamics — the rise of cultural politics, identitarian ideologies and separate partisan versions of reality — that shrink America’s common ground and make it difficult for elected leaders to forge consensus around anything. 

Nonetheless, both strains of analysis agree that ineffectual governance corrodes the social trust necessary to sustain a healthy democracy. People who don’t believe the government can help them solve their problems are less disposed to trust and cooperate with others, and more susceptible to populist strongmen who promise to help them regain power over their lives.

American democracy once seemed capable of grand achievements: Defeating fascism and Japanese imperialism, putting a man on the moon, dismantling barriers to equal rights for Blacks and women and building the international alliances and economic institutions that enabled the democracies to prosper and prevail in the Cold War.

The challenge for Biden and the Democrats this year isn’t just to keep Trump out of the White House. It’s also to commit to making government work again and restoring America’s reputation as a “can do” democracy.

Will Marshall is the founder and president of the Progressive Policy Institute.