In January 1911, Henry Stimson, the blueblood aristocrat who would go on to serve in cabinets of Presidents William Howard Taft, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, addressed a Republican confab in Cleveland. Still young at the time, Stimson was, back then, a beacon of the GOP’s progressive wing. In his view, a corrupt bargain aligning machine bosses and corporate interests was undermining the public interest. The solution, Stimson argued, wasn’t to keep steering into laissez-faire economics. It was to empower executive branch officials to rise above the morass. The future luminary argued that America faced then something similar to what the Founding Generation had confronted in the years immediately following the American Revolution. And, given the relatable circumstances, he prescribed a similar tonic.
The analogy appeared clear enough. The figures who ruled the colonies at the behest of the English crown had been, in the prevailing view of eighteenth-century patriots, utter tyrants, men accountable only to a parliament sitting across a vast ocean. They had been abusive to their subjects, imposing their will without accounting for popular sentiment, subjecting them, most famously, to “taxation without representation.” Upon declaring independence, the Founding Generation had crafted a system of government that was purposefully, and explicitly, weak.1 As Stimson explained: “They cut the Executive down to a term too short to carry through any constructive policy; they took away his chiefs of department, and made them either elective or otherwise independent of him; they separated him as far as possible from the representative lawmaking body with which he must work; and in every way they reduced him to a mere ornament of doubtful beauty.”2
But the results of what we might call America’s original cultural aversion to power had been an out-and-out disaster.3 The pitifully inept government created by the Articles of Confederation was too ham-handed to hold a burgeoning society together. No national law could be passed without the support of nine of the thirteen states. The national government could not tax citizens directly, provide for a standing military, or establish a national currency. When foreign creditors began to demand that the United States begin repaying debts from the Revolutionary War, some in the Confederation Congress proposed a 5 percent tax on imported goods, and nearly all thirteen original states agreed. But the small state of Rhode Island held out, undermining the entire effort. The national government, in short, couldn’t deliver.
Perhaps of even more concern to James Madison and many of the other well-heeled men who had led the campaign for independence, the states were themselves falling into chaos. State legislators came from different stock than the men who had by and large signed the Declaration of Independence. Many were beacons of the working class who, by the standards of the aristocracy, appeared shortsighted and dim-witted. These new workaday legislators championed laws designed to serve their own constituencies, even when those interests cut against the broader public interest. A French minister complained that the new class of legislator was too tethered “to the vulgar and sordid notions of the populace.” Perhaps most pointedly, many supported schemes to issue new, looser currency that benefited those paying off debts but cut against the interest of men who, like George Washington, had originally extended various credits.4
It was the national government’s incompetent response to what became known as Shays’s Rebellion in western Massachusetts that finally propelled a whole band of founders, including Washington, to pursue a course correction. That’s what the Constitution of 1787 was designed to be: a form of government less tyrannical than the colonial governors, but more competent (or, put less delicately, less democratic) than what existed under the Articles.5 It rebalanced America’s competing desires for more and less centralized power.6 Even the Bill of Rights, viewed today as an addendum intended to protect individuals against coercive public authority, was seen at the time as protecting the government against popular opinion. The Founding Generation was more worried about, say, Catholics making government a tool of the papacy than they were about ensuring everyone could worship using the liturgy of their choice.7
During the century that followed, Americans adjusted this balance several times. If George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton had burnished centralized power for fear of chaos, the Jacksonians of the 1820s worked to peel power away from the nation’s capital for want of protecting their little hamlets from far-off authority. The Civil War spelled that counterimpulse, with Abraham Lincoln building up the national government to put down a rebellion over the institution of slavery. But then, as Stimson argued a half century later, Americans had sought a return, again, to more limited government. During the Gilded Age, government had been so entirely corrupted by trusts, machines, and courts—legislatures answered to bosses and judges to corporations—that the teeter-totter had tipped the other way.8 As Stimson exclaimed to the Republicans in Cleveland: “The boss and his power is the direct outgrowth of depriving the public officer of his power.”9
It was from this core dynamic that Herbert Croly, founding editor of the New Republic, had derived his famous phrase to define progressivism: “Jeffersonian ends by Hamiltonian means.” Recognizing that the government was too hamstrung to deliver, he wanted to re-enliven the thrust that had spurred Washington to support the Constitution in the wake of Shays’s Rebellion and that had driven Abraham Lincoln to protect the Union in the wake of the South’s secession. He wanted to steal power away from machines and judges not simply because he believed that some band of well-educated, upper-crust bureaucrats would be better at leading the country—though that surely informed his thinking. He and his fellow progressives believed that, in the great American tradition of perfecting the balance between two well-intentioned impulses, the country had edged too far in one direction.
Croly’s view prevailed, even as the impulse to centralize power seeped out of Stimson’s GOP and into Woodrow Wilson’s Democratic Party.10 And for more than the half century that followed—really until the late 1960s and early 1970s—progressivism’s Hamiltonian impulse carried greater weight. The narrative that framed the movement’s understanding of government was one that argued public authority was the only salve for the big societal problems. Professional bureaucrats were deemed beacons of the only institution capable of corralling the selfish interests of corporations, political machines, and special-interest groups. As Franklin Roosevelt declared during his first presidential campaign: “When the interests of the many are concerned, the interests of the few must yield.”11 And while Jeffersonian notions still hovered in the background, the movement’s impulse to centralize power reigned supreme.
But then, in keeping with America’s long history of sailing in one direction and then later tacking back in the other, the Jeffersonian impulse reemerged. Echoing America’s eighteenth-century revulsion for colonial tyrants, and the country’s Jacksonian rejection of federal power, progressivism began to spurn its Hamiltonian bent. Reformers began to realize that the bureaucracies born out of Herbert Croly’s vision had become imperious to the point of being authentically tyrannical. Robert Moses wasn’t some benevolent public figure by the end—he had morphed into a scourge. And he represented just one of the octopus’s many tentacles. By the 1970s, progressivism undoubtedly needed a course correction. Centralized power had to be brought to heel.
Over the course of the last half century, that explicitly Jeffersonian project has succeeded—and, in many cases, beyond what its original champions might have thought possible. To that very point, we’ve now reached the other inflection point in the cycle, a moment not unlike when the Articles of Confederation proved unworkable, and when Henry Stimson addressed some of his fellow Republicans in 1911. In the latter instance, the culprits were machines and courts, institutions that answered to different constituencies but whose collective influence prevented government from serving the public interest. Today, by contrast, the underlying dysfunction is born from different sources—from laws, and precedents, and various other machinations. But the effect is largely the same. Progressivism, born more than a century ago, has come full circle.
If America faces today another Articles of Confederation moment—if, as this book has argued, public power has been diffused too thoroughly for government to deliver—progressivism will need to shift course yet again.12 But rather than perpetuate the cycle, or open the door to another age defined by Robert Moses–style Hamiltonianism, reformers need now to seek a more balanced approach, one that puts centralized power and individualized safeguards in proper harmony. First and foremost, that will require a change in the progressive mindset. It will mean pursuing policies that give public officials more room to maneuver, even while guarding against unlimited mandates. It will mean shaving back but not eviscerating some of the reforms that have defined the last half century. In a phrase, it will mean giving communities a voice but not a veto.
This new approach will play differently in distinct contexts.13 In the realm of housing, for example, the shift may take a lighter touch simply because reformers have found a Jeffersonian approach to expanding supply. The YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) movement that has emerged to counter the rampant NIMBYism isn’t Hamiltonian at all—it agitates for pushing power down past neighborhood opponents of new development to property owners eager to develop their underutilized lots. YIMBYs, in many instances, would allow otherwise frustrated developers to build multifamily homes near transit stops as of right—that is, no matter whether the neighbors object. No zoning restrictions. No noise standards. No environmental protections. Worries about local “character” notwithstanding. If someone purchases that lot, YIMBY reformers would build housing supply up by pushing power down.
But if Jeffersonianism may work effectively to enhance the nation’s housing supply, the same approach will likely come up short when applied to other challenges. You can’t coalesce the right-of-way to build a high-speed rail track or a high-voltage transmission line by pushing power down. Some centralized authority needs to clear the path. And that centralized authority will need the wisdom and discretion to render judgment. Not every proposed mass transit line will meet the standard of a wise public investment, nor does every new roadway threaten a pernicious scheme to marginalize a minority community. Not every transmission line is worthwhile, but neither is every new pipeline a step toward the apocalypse. Citizens of all stripes can disagree in good faith on the merits—progressives will inevitably disagree among themselves. But, in the end, someone needs to be empowered to choose.14
The question is, how? Not every stakeholder should have the wherewithal to stand in the way. No single figure should be able to impose their will with impunity. Not every decision should be made by a court bound by the limits of judicial precedent. Government “by the people, and for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln once described American democracy, needs today to develop more expeditious ways to weigh competing interests against one another. It needs to be able to metabolize opposition without an excess of delay. We can’t forever endure the false choice of tyranny or nothing—of either letting Robert Moses tear up the South Bronx or allowing a fetid Penn Station to fester for decades. We need a process that considers broad public interests and that provides everyone a voice but not a veto.
This is not a new idea. In the early Progressive Era, those worried about the unfettered power of executive branch agencies proposed molding the judiciary to oversee their decisions—a Commerce Court, for example, to rule on decisions made by the Interstate Commerce Commission charged with regulating the railroads.15 In 1977, DC Circuit Court judge David Bazelon, pushing back against colleagues agitating for new depths of judicial oversight of regulatory decisions, argued that the courts should instead ensure that decisions were “ventilated in a public forum and with public input and participation.”16 Then, in his view, the responsible expert would make a decision. He extolled, for example, Carter administration transportation secretary William Coleman’s efforts to solicit input as to whether the loud and potentially cancer-inducing supersonic passenger jet, the Concorde SST, should be permitted to land in the United States. Coleman, having been careful to demonstrate that he understood the trade-offs, was empowered to make the decision.17
We’ve seen that sort of process work. Recall, for example, that a single figure was given authority to divvy up the compensation provided to victims of the September 11 attacks. President George W. Bush appointed a former counsel to Ted Kennedy, Ken Feinberg, as the fund’s special master, and he alone had the power to determine what each affected family should receive. Feinberg didn’t have an entirely free hand—and families had the option of rejecting his recommendation and bringing separate suits to court. But in most cases, Feinberg’s judgment was satisfactory, however subjective it appeared to be. A single figure, with singular power, limited within certain bounds, to shape the final outcome.
The same basic premise prevails in the realm of criminal justice. Designed as a diversionary program for drug offenders, drug courts offer individuals charged with minor offenses an opportunity to avoid indictment. To be diverted, the accused must take responsibility for their crime and agree to certain conditions established by a combination of lawyers, social workers, and addiction specialists. During the course of the program, offenders are often required to submit to drug tests, attend counseling sessions, keep a job, and more. But in return for allowing these government officials to play a strong hand, the offender is spared a criminal sentencing. When executed well, the program can offer someone whose life is spiraling a way forward that prison might forestall.
So-called immigration courts provide another example—even if the system has more recently been overwhelmed. Since 1940, the Department of Justice has maintained an often overwhelmed system for making adjudicative decisions about who can and cannot come and stay in the United States almost entirely within its own purview. Decisions made by presidentially appointed “judges” who report to the attorney general are frequently final. Indeed, they are explicitly exempt from the procedures required by the Administrative Procedure Act.18 But decision-making processes need not cut the judiciary out altogether. Colorado, for example, has created a special water court to deal with disputes over water consumption, and Utah has begun to experiment with a similar, if more limited, model. Colorado cases are subjected to a mediation process before coming to trial—a process designed to head off further litigation using a “referee.” The hope is that having a clear expert figure sitting in judgment will expedite decision-making.19
The analogies aren’t perfect. But these programs are birds of a feather in that they offer substantive but not unlimited discretion to specific government figures—more decision-making power than, say, highway engineers and housing officials generally have over new construction, but less than the Federal Reserve has over interest rates and the Pentagon has over troop deployments. And while mechanisms for determining family compensation and diverting criminals from incarceration are fundamentally different than the process for siting a transmission line or clearing a train track’s right-of-way, the balance of public authority and individual rights points to a broad sort of precedent.20 Progressives need not make a Manichaean choice between coercion and paralysis.
In some cases, progressives can look overseas for promising models. Spain, for example, has embraced an alternative approach to infrastructure construction. Rather than assign the public bureaucracies that operate the transit system responsibility for building new lines, the Spanish empower an expert national agency to plan and construct new infrastructure that, once complete, is bequeathed to local authorities to operate and maintain. As a result, those making the decisions about routes and station sitings are less beholden than the operating authority might be to locals with self-interested concerns.21 America could adapt this system to provide a process by which local objections were given a forum, or even weighted consideration.
But it’s not just the structure of decision-making that needs to change. Even if the judicial system was too deferential to figures like Robert Moses in the early postwar era, administrative jurisprudence has since overcorrected. The challenge now isn’t to find a way back to the norms of the previous era. It’s to carve a jurisprudence that allows, once again, for government to parse conflicting interests expeditiously.22 The judiciary today, for example, maintains a whole separate system of patent law designed to balance the rights of those who create new things against the rights of those who would seek to utilize that intellectual property.23 The executive branch has created a whole bureaucracy to deal with tax disputes: the United States Tax Court.24 A similar sort of system could be erected to settle disputes in realms of housing, infrastructure, and more. Already, some have proposed that all challenges to the National Environmental Policy Act be funneled directly past federal district courts to be considered at first instance by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
All that said, if the details of these changes are important, they are downstream of how progressives understand the nature of their dilemma. The last major progressive pivot was born not from some technical epiphany or ideological breakthrough. Fundamentally, reformers beginning in the 1960s and 1970s shifted their policy agenda in response to a change in culture—in the progressive zeitgeist. The movement was reacting viscerally to evidence that the Establishment was rotten, as demonstrated by the carnage of war, the scourge of pesticides, the injustice of institutional racism, the corruption of Watergate, and more. It was only after the zeitgeist changed that reformers began to hammer out the Jeffersonian thrust that has prevailed over the last several decades. The movement had to behold the octopus before it could seek to manacle its tentacles.
This book was written not to prescribe the specific changes that should be made in every realm of public policy, but to argue for a shift in narrative. Solutions are at hand to nearly all the movement’s grievances. America can address climate change. We can build more housing. We can make communities more equitable, expand opportunity, redress old bigotries, and more. But reformers are bound to face unnecessary frustration if they refuse to allow some measure of additional power to flow into the hands of responsible public officials. The movement faces an Articles of Confederation moment, and the only way out is to recognize the problem, and pivot.
Which brings us back to politics. It likely goes without saying that rendering government incompetent is a lousy way to draw voters into an ideological movement bent on employing government to solve big problems. Ordinary people who experience the morass of inept bureaucracy will, like New Yorkers frustrated with Mayor Ed Koch’s inability to restore Wollman Rink, be tempted to turn to someone with the individual moxie to get the job done. That was Donald Trump’s appeal in the mid-1980s, and he employed the same basic rationale as an iconoclastic politician on the national stage. But it’s not just that unrepentant Jeffersonianism doesn’t work. Ordinary people aren’t monolithically averse to power. They don’t want public authority abused, but they know that progress is impossible without leadership. And insofar as the subtext of contemporary progressive ideology is that anyone wielding power is in the wrong, the movement alienates itself from voters who might otherwise support its agenda.
Some will retort that progressive ideology isn’t the problem. Right-wingers, the argument goes, purposefully distort what progressives really aim to do. And their dishonesty metastasizes in right-wing echo chambers, with Fox News, conservative talk radio, and various voices on social media manipulating an impressionable electorate into believing, erroneously, that progressives hate America and want to upend every vestige of “traditional” American life. Well, fair enough. Some of progressivism’s detractors are bound to take that angle—and there’s not much we can do to stop them.
But even if progressives aren’t actually bent on tearing down every manifestation of public and private authority, the conservative criticism that progressives hate America draws strength from the naked reality of our cultural aversion to power. Conservative critiques may seem to those inside the movement as something close to preposterous—progressives typically bill themselves as beacons of more government. But the public’s recoil when Barack Obama suggested that red America was “cling[ing] to guns or religion” and when Hillary Clinton labeled some Trump supporters “deplorables” didn’t emerge from thin air.25 It was rooted in public perceptions that progressivism wants to upend any vestige of tradition and… power.
This is the crux of the political argument for rebalancing progressivism’s Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian impulses. The movement purports to support growing government so that public authority can take a stronger hand protecting the vulnerable. But then progressives excoriate government as a captured tool of the patriarchy. Those of us who style ourselves progressive typically gloss over that nuance for a simple reason: it’s awkward and confusing. Most progressives want both to empower government to combat climate change and to curtail government’s authority over a woman’s right to choose. And squaring that circle is more intellectually difficult than standing strong against Trumpism, or calling out conservative bigotry, or excoriating the shadowy figures eager to steer the country toward fascism. There’s no storming the barricades in support of a healthy balance between contradictory impulses. And so progressives typically retreat into reflexive anticonservatism.
Criticizing your adversaries is not, of and by itself, a terrible political strategy. When the other side supports truly terrible and unpopular ideas—separating children from their parents at the border, limiting women’s bodily autonomy, stripping away environmental protections, cutting Social Security and Medicare—there’s little downside to drawing the public’s attention to their retrograde agenda. But, for progressives, there’s danger in that appeal. A movement consumed by exasperation over how so many people could have voted for Trump, or supported his agenda, or turned a blind eye to his conduct after losing in 2020, will be less inclined to correct for its own errors. If progressives put making government work not on the periphery of the movement’s agenda but at the heart of its zeitgeist, voters might be less vulnerable to the sirens of the populist right.
There is, of course, one authentic and powerful reason progressives should worry about making government hum. A government that operates expeditiously—a public authority with fewer guardrails—will inevitably be utilized not only to serve progressive desires but to pursue conservative ends as well. Any change that would have made it easier for the Obama administration to identify well-intentioned “shovel-ready” projects in 2009 and 2010, or for clean energy companies to build transmission lines through Arkansas or Maine, or for developers to build new affordable housing in New York and California, might well have opened the door for someone else to build a legion of new coal-fired power plants, or to gentrify minority neighborhoods.
But that’s a risk progressives today need to take, a bargain they need to accept. A government too hamstrung to serve the public good will fuel future waves of conservative populism. Voters are drawn to figures like Donald Trump not because public authority is too pervasive, but because government can’t deliver. His refrain claiming that the “deep state” has sold the ordinary citizen out—that insiders are constantly making “bad deals” on the nation’s behalf—lands, in no small part, because voters have witnessed the incompetence firsthand. Lionizing government and then ensuring it fails is, in the end, among the worst of bad political strategies.26 The movement needs to change course not only because it’s bad policy, but because it’s bad politics as well.
That, in the end, is the best argument for full-circle progressivism. The movement has been justified to erect protections against Robert Moses–era abuse—to manacle the octopus. But that Jeffersonian retrenchment, now more than fifty years old, has run its course. Now, the core obstacle to the movement’s substantive success—to greater economic equality and prosperity, to more social justice and responsibility, to a more robust response to climate change, to more housing, to greater mobility—isn’t centralized power. It’s the absence of centralized power. Populism takes hold not when democracy works well, but rather when it doesn’t deliver. No amount of righteous sanctimony can substitute for the political benefits of making public authority serve the public interest. Moving forward, that should be the progressive movement’s north star.