Pod Save America - 1115: Why Are Democrats Afraid of Power?

Episode Date: February 1, 2026

Marc J. Dunkelman, author of "Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring It Back," stops by the studio to talk to Lovett about how Democrats — once they regain power — can make government work again. Together they dive into the ways progressive governance changed from the New Deal to today, the influence of Robert Caro's polemic "The Power Broker" on a generation of public employees, and why they're both hopeful that Democrats will be able to find their way out of the darkness and learn to do big things again.

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to Potsave America. I'm John Lovett. Obviously right now for National Democrats, success is defined by what we can stop. It counts as some kind of good news when the president walks back his threat to use military force against Greenland or removes a petty tyrant and a fascist outfit from the streets of Minneapolis. And our job over the next year is to use what little power we have to stop the administration's worst successes while winning what will ultimately be a referendum on Trump's cruelty and failures. But regardless of the outcome in 2026, the Democrats are in a massive hole. The country may be turning against Trump, but that has not corresponded to any newfound love for his opposition. In recent polls, barely a third of voters have a positive view

of the Democratic Party. And so one thing we're trying to do is have conversations about where we go from here, whatever happens in the midterms. And so that's why I wanted to have the conversation we had today. I spoke to Mark Dunkelman. He wrote a book called Why Nothing Works, and it is a story about what happened to progressive governance and the changes in the way progressives think about power between the New Deal and today and what we need to do to prove to people that Democrats not only deserve power, but Democrats know how to use power once we have it. And a lot of times this gets framed as a left, center-left debate, it kind of falls into the usual grooves of our kind of ideological fights over the last 10 or more years. Sometimes it feels like people like to bring

their old baggage to a debate because it's easier than packing a new suitcase. But I think it's worth listening to this as an opportunity for everybody in the pro-democracy movement to understand what we have to do to demonstrate to people that democracy can actually deliver for people and the progressives can actually deliver on the promises that we make. Whatever you believe government should be trying to do for people, whatever vision you believe the Democratic Party should have. It was a great conversation that will kind of help put in context some of the fights we're having right now about the role of government and some of the reasons that Trump is able to

make a lot of kind of political hey out of him being able to do things that other people couldn't do and why Democrats need to carefully learn some lessons from that while understanding that we should also listen to people and follow the law and respect basic values and the role of institutions. So it was a great conversation. It was a book I really enjoyed and I think you'll like it. Welcome to the show. Nice to meet you. Thank you. Great to meet you. So I am a huge fan of your book, Why Nothing Works. Thanks. And then there's a subtitle. So I want to start with something you wrote recently and then we'll get into the book, which you wrote an op-ed for the Times called What the Left Could Learn from Trump's Brutal Efficiency. And I think that's a great way in to the debate around the book. So what can we learn from Trump's brutal efficiency? So the thing that I want those of us on the left to think about is the degree to which our primary zeitgeist for the last 50 years has been to speak truth to power. We see big institutions.

We see powerful people. And our instinct is to say there's something wrong there. They do something wrong. They're somehow smushing little people. And we need to. out with the bad things they're doing, figure it out, call it out, stop it. And that is largely at odds with what progressivism began as a mission, which was how do we create big, powerful institutions that will do big things for people who can't do for themselves.

Those are two totally different missions. And Trump has come into office. And he's got control over this huge bureaucracy, and he's done things with it. Like, you know, the sort of the quintessential thing, just to, it's not the most important thing that he's done. It's not something that I particularly like, but he just knocked down the east wing of the White House.

He just did it. And that is sort of a powerful example of a guy who sort of said, I'm not going to go through the process. I'm not just going to, I'm not going to bow to the whims of all the boxes I need to check, all the T's I need to cross, all the eyes I need to dock. I'm just going to do things that progressives in many cases don't think to do. I think that in order for us to be popular again, we need to show that government can work. I think we are already, by default, the party of government.

Our movement is the one that wants government to work. And so that if we're going to try to glean a mandate from the people, we need to make government work in the first place. And that means that they need to have a sense that when they want things to be done, government is going to actually deliver. So obviously Trump manages to move quickly, knock down East Wings, destroy bureaucracies, because he's breaking the law in a lot of cases or ignoring regulations wherever it suits him. How much are we limited because we wouldn't do that?

Like how much could there be a democratic version of that that is bound by law that does have respect for institutions but also wants to move quickly? Like it feels like we're kind of the two options, which is the kind of a democratic style of leadership in which you're kind of like in Gulliver's travelers kind of tied down. And then you have Trump who's lawless. Right? Like I don't know. I can't, I don't, how do you decide where that line is, where a Democratic president would be able to move quickly and get things done quickly while being respectful of those institutions? Yeah. Well, I think it's a terrific point in a terrific distinction. The point I want to make here is that when we are creating programs, when we are thinking about the reforms that we want to do next time we're in office. If that ever happens. And that's something we just do hope we'll. happen. Yep.

Continue. Well, I'm going to presume that it, until proven not, I'm going to presume that it will happen. Great. We should be thinking not only about the things that we hope to do, but we should be thinking about how we plan to design those programs in a way so that we can actually deliver, so that we are building the sorts of programs which we used to build, which gave a fair amount of discretion and power to bureaucrats who made decisions and were able to get things done.

expeditiously. So let me, can I give you an example? Please. So at the beginning of the New Deal, so we're going to ask, yeah. There was a region of the country that was fly over country before we had the term. It was the upper south, the area around the Tennessee Valley. It was an area that the local utility had chosen not to wire up because the farmers were so poor that they didn't believe that they'd get any return on the investment of

building poles and wires to these poor farmers who were both black and white. And so Franklin Roosevelt hired a lawyer from Wisconsin, essentially, to build the Tennessee Valley Authority, which by itself had the power to build dams, build wires, reforest whole countryside, and through just pure public power, hire both. black and white workers who, like, let's be honest, were put up in different encampments. Like it was a southern institution. It was segregated. But they miraculously, in almost no time, built a huge power infrastructure that wired up

these farms and, you know, really brought enormous benefits to people who were living at, you know, 19th century standards when the rest of the country was well into the 20th century. incredibly fast, incredible power with Lillenfall making these decisions. No real concern about local objections, no real input, no environmental impact statements, no sort of considerations like this. The better part of a century later, President Biden in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, includes $7.5 billion to put a little. electric vehicle chargers in the places along the network where it does not make economic sense

to place EV chargers. He realizes that the reason that people aren't buying electric vehicles is because they are worried that if they want to drive far, they're going to be places on the interstates where there is no place to recharge their car, so they're worried the day before Thanksgiving when they're driving to grandma's house that they're going to be stuck. There's going to be no place. So he's going to subsidize the construction of those EVs. There's no federal workforce to build those EV chargers.

So he's going to have to build a rule that will then put those dollars in the hands of state highway departments. Those state highway departments have never worked with EV charging companies. They're going to have to figure out what sort of equipment. They're going to have to find places to lease to put those EV charges that aren't places where the EV charging companies would otherwise want to put the EV chargers. They're then going to have to competitively bid to the EV charging companies, you know, so they compete with them. They're they're going to have to convince the utility companies that they should sort of set aside all the work they're doing to, you know, power up these various data centers that are demanding more and more electricity and instead take some time to wire up these remotely placed EV charging facilities that very few people are going to want it.

Right. Like, it's, I mean, that is a very long process. I think that the people who are working on this program, the Nevi program, were like working really hard. Like, I think like they made lots of really hard to sit. Like, like, like, like, Andrew Rogers, like, you can name the people who are involved. Buttigieg's whole team. Like, like, like, I think they were really working hard and diligently. At the end of the administration, three years later, $7.5 billion, only 58 charges were out. It looked embarrassing. There were lots of negative stories. It was one of Trump's, I. attacks on the Democratic Party. That wasn't laziness. It wasn't the bureaucracy gone wrong. It wasn't, like, it wasn't anyone's fault, per se, but it was the way that the government has been structured, something that happened between when the TVA was able to do things expeditiously and the period where government looked incompetent. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a government got lazy.

It was that we had inserted so many process checks into the system that we were. We Democrats and progressives and reformers who were afraid of government working too fast and in many cases doing things that were bad made it so that government couldn't work effectively. Well, I want to just challenge that a little bit. This is a bipartisan infrastructure bill, right? And if we had wanted as Democrats to pass, say, a proposal that would have created a national core of federal clean energy workers to go across the country, rapidly installing these things. You wouldn't have had the Republican support. Isn't part of the problem here that in order to get something like this through,

the kind of big, fast-moving New Deal-style programs you would want are just not politically possible without more democratic control. Like I hear you on once you put it into this system, once you don't just sort of federalize it and have it done at the federal level, yeah, you're going to enter into the buzzsaw of private companies and contracts and local governments and all these rules. But what isn't the alternative just needing a bigger majority? I wonder.

I mean, it's an excellent counterfactual. I'd want to ask the folks who are involved, what would the electrical workers think? What would our allies, as the state levels think about being preempted? What would the... And we require fighting those groups. So it requires a Democratic president

or Democratic policymaking apparatus that understood it had to kind of push through and kind of drive things to a yes to get things done quickly. Yeah, I mean, even by the time you get to the Johnson administration, you know, the war on poverty, there is a proposal

for a jobs core program which would have trained lots of young people to work in the building trades and like the unions that are allies of the Johnson administration kill it in the power. process of negotiation. They don't want a bevy of new supply of labor to come in and compete with

them. So, like, yes, I mean, Franklin, I mean, those are, that's an interesting question. At this point, the notion at the moment of creating a huge new federal workforce to do this for anything. For anything is sort of beyond the pale of imagination. But it's a, it's a worthwhile thought experiment that I haven't I haven't considered. And definitely something that I should think about. Well, the reason I ask is because in the book, and it's another example I think is worth sharing, can you just talk about how quickly in the New Deal, a program for people out of work to begin work, how quickly it was stood up and, I think almost as importantly, what happened when it was stood down? Like what was the time horizon for some of these New Deal programs to get off the ground?

Yeah, months. Like the... Civilian Conservation Corps, it's a matter of months for, you know, hundreds of thousands. The CWA came together and something like some huge portion of the nation was hired under that program with it in less than a year, like something like 5% of a country. I mean, I mean, it was just incredibly fast. And then, yeah, you're absolutely right. But Franklin Roosevelt also recognized these were temporary relief programs. programs wound them down quickly. And so certainly by the end of the Second World War, most of the alphabet soup of programs that we remember from seventh grade social studies had been

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I think then it's worth getting into the politics of this. The new deal, both the creation of programs like Social Security,

as well as the jobs programs and economic recovery programs that were stood up during the New Deal to me have always represented

the high water mark or a high watermark of what progressive governance can look like, what it means to have an active progressive government trying to quickly solve problems and produce broad-based economic relief and prosperity. And yet, there's this strange phenomenon where, whether it's your book or the abundance book that's gotten attention, it somehow has managed to find kind of our usual ideological groove. Just the other day, Elizabeth Warren gave a speech where she spoke in a pejorative way about

the abundance agenda. And obviously your book is a separate argument from that, but it's connected to it. You see a lot of people frame a debate as sort of left populist economics versus kind of reform oriented sort of pro-government reform agenda as being at odds with each other. And I'm wondering why you, what happened? Like, why do you think this has taken on sort of an ideological valence. I don't know. I think habit for the most part. Like I don't find much of it to be totally compelling.

Yeah. You know, there's something cultural that happens. Like the moments that you're talking about in the New Deal, progressives really do have a cultural affinity for centralized. power, right? Like, you see a big public problem. There aren't enough wires to keep these poor people in the Tennessee Valley above, like, really abject poverty. There isn't enough irrigation to stop the dust bowl. You know, there isn't enough relief in big urban centers. And so, What you want to do is create these big centralized bureaucracies that are going to fix these problems.

So, you know, there's a guy named Mike Strauss who runs the, I think it's Mike Strauss, who runs the Bureau of Reclamation. Like, it's a bureaucracy that's inside the Department of Interior, like most Americans who aren't in agricultural places that depend on dams, have never heard of that bureaucracy. he's succeeded by a guy named, I think, Floyd Domini in the, you know, in the 1950s and 60s. They are figures who are a piece like Robert Moses, who runs the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, and David Lillenthal, who runs the TVA, and, you know, Austin Tobin, who runs the Port Authority in New York City. and, you know, you can, these sort of really powerful figures are just sort of run across America, and they are generally revered. Now, they wear, you know, they wear charcoal suits and fedoras, and they cross their arms like this, and they frown, like the world, you know, like, they hold the weight of the world.

But generally Americans, having seen what George Marshall did, uh, to defeat, you know, the, the Nazis and right, to make the world safe, like generally revered these figures. And, like, they are willing to accept their wisdom. And then something happens in the 60s and 70s. And it turns out we discover that, like, these guys aren't, you know, the wise sages that we presume them to be in all circumstances, that they threw DDT on our crops and that caused birth defects, that they let, you know, pollution flow into the Cuyahoga River,

so it's the lid on fire, that they did urban renewal, and they did interstate programs that destroyed minority neighborhoods, and that they sent us into Vietnam, right, Robert McNamara. So by the time to get to the 70s, like, these guys are, like, generally seen as bad. Like the power broker, which is the takedown of Robert Moses in New York City and reveals that this guy who had remade the landscape of New York City during between the 30s and the 60s had like strangled the city with interstates and like driven the cross Bronx expressway across a borough of New York City and like, you know, left it to be like just sort of a the epitome of urban blight and despair. like, like that was a, that book came out right during Watergate, right? Like, it was like, it was sort of, sort of a, uh, a symbol of how the great establishment

that had been vested with so much, uh, we, we, as the American people had vested them with so much, uh, respect for all these decades was wrong. And like, you get to the 70s, like, we get, like, these people are, are epitomized by like boss hog, right? Like, I mean, like, like, Like, that's the view, and we need to take them down so that you get, I mean, all the cultural references, you know, like in network, it's, you know, like, I'm mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore, right? Like, like, that's the sort of the notion, or even that famous Apple ad from 1984, where, right, where, what do they take a javelin and someone comes in and there's a bunch of

a bunch of Robert Moses, Richard Daly-looking figures, sort of speaking out into the into sort of controlling people and someone comes in and throw like that becomes the ethos how are we going to break down the establishment and that became the central sort of pillar of progressive thought and that downstream of that thinking became a whole series of legislative maneuvers designed to box in government the gullivers travels image like that i considered that or someone suggested that to me is for a cover image of my book, right? Which would, the sort of notion that that there's, that there's, that there's, government can't move, um, that it, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that,

that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, the new, a, a, a, a, a to, uh, to, uh, to the city. You can't do it. You want to build a high-speed railroad line. You can't do it. You want to build more house and you can't do it. Like, it seems to me that, like, the neobrandesians left liberal, uh, to the, Elizabeth Warren, Lena Khan, world. Like, I think that they're fundamentally sympathetic. Yeah. They want to do that.

Right. Yeah. And, like, I don't think that the abundance people, like, don't think that we should take on monopolies. Right. So, like, it actually feels to me like this should be a topic on which we can all agree. And like just the sort of sense that we, we, we, we, we, we're Democrats. So we're going to find stuff to, you know, circular firing squad and, and ever. But, but, but, but, but anyway, I, I, I, I, you probably have a better explanation for me than what, why we're fighting about this stuff.

I, well, I, I, I think part of it is a feeling that a lot of what politics is right now, it's defined by making sure you have the right enemies. And I don't say that in a pejorative way, right? Like people are critical of those who suggest that bureaucracy or progressive governance is the source of stymied clean energy projects when it's actually Republicans and corporate interference that plays a role as well. But also, I think part of this is it wasn't just a cultural reaction to the sort of best and brightest style suit wearing white men that made these decisions. It was a policy reaction. I'm from Long Island. We have the Long Island Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway, which starts as the Northern State Parkway through Long Island. And it was a kind of a fact about, like kind of a trivia fact about the Northern State Parkway that the overpasses were low because Robert Moses didn't want buses filled with black people to get to the beach.

and then there are turns in that expressway because of the like kind of personal egotistical interests of these these men and you know we're here in los angeles you drive the 101 uh is a scar that runs down uh the center of uh hollywood and through the city around which the value of the land went down right like that like there's just uh all these implications for what happens when singular figures are in power to make decisions because A, communities are in herd, and B, they have their own biases that they bring to the table. Like, I went to Lake, you know, Lake Mead or Lake Powell. You're like, how does this exist? How did they fill this canyon with water? And nobody stopped them. I'm glad it's there. I had an enjoyable time on the boat. But what the fuck? This is crazy.

So it is a little bit of a correct reaction to what happened. I mean, this is the great challenge. that I feel like I'm facing now and that I would hope all progressives would engage in a really productive discussion about because clearly we don't want to go back to the Robert Moses, Lloyd Dominie, Robert McNamara era where like singular figures could make decisions entirely on their own and without consideration of the effects on individual communities. Like, that was bad news bears, right? Fair enough. We've now gone, I think, to the other extreme, where we've created all sorts of mechanisms

for those communities that would otherwise have been bulldozed by the Robert Moses's or dominies or whomever to speak up. We've created environmental laws and, you know, historic preservation statutes and requirements for communities to have voices. And we've created rights of action in court. We've created all sorts of mechanisms. And now, like, we know that people are using bullshit excuses. Like, they don't want the housing to be put up.

near them. They're afraid that a black family is going to move in or a poor family is going to move into the apartments. So they say, I think that I once saw a bald eagle, right? Or they are afraid that the train line is going to come and bifurcate their little neighborhood. So they create some sort of, I think this, this homeless historic or I think that this is actually a brownfield, that there was, that there was, you know, oil and, like, they create all sorts of barriers such that now we can't build the things that we know that we need. Now, between these two extremes of allowing one, like, powerful dude to make the choices, like, unabated, and on this other end, allowing anyone with objection to stop anything,

it's got to be some sort of process that allows everyone to have a voice and no one to have a veto. I don't know exactly how that would work, right? That's what I'm working on now. I'm trying to figure out, like, how do corporations do this? Now, I was looking at the Nevi program at one point, and someone told me this story, sort of have sort of interesting. I was thinking about just as a private sector example. when they were doing the Nevi program, Elon Musk had the supercharger program for Tesla.

And already people were buying Tesla's not only because they like Tesla's, but because if you bought a Tesla, there were already lots of superchargers all over the country. And the people who had inside Tesla who had the supercharger program, like they were running those, we're like, we could license this to Ford and to the other companies. and we could get some of that $7.5 billion, and that would significantly augment the overall size of the EV market. Maybe we should do it. The people inside Tesla who were selling Tesla cars were horrified that anyone would suggest it because, well, that was what they were selling their cars with, right? It was an advantage.

It was an advantage for Tesla as a value proposition. Correct. So the question for Elon Musk is the CEO is, do I, want to have a larger slice of a smaller pie or a smaller slice of a larger pie. That's a hard decision. And whatever he chooses, he's going to be pissing off some portion of his, you know, of his, of his company, of his employees. But it's a hard decision. He could have come in to Doge and said, you know, I understand what this is like.

I'm the CEO. I want to make it so when you are the head of Noah, right, the national. oceanic administration. The bureaucracy that is regulating offshore wind, animals, right, right, right. And you are faced with a dilemma, right, where you have some, some burden, where you, some people want to put offshore wind and some people are worried about the animals that are going to be interfered with, that you have more discretion to choose, more expeditiously. between these choices, understanding that there are costs, that, you know, there are going to be some

animals or some flora or fauna, like, I don't know what that. There are tradeoffs in every policy. There are tradeoffs that you can make that choice more expeditiously. That would have been a useful thing for Doge to have done. Instead, what we know Elon did is that he took the approach in Doge that he took when he took over Twitter. Just fire a bunch of people. Less useful.

Right. But, but, but like, there is, like, there is, like, that's something for us as progressives to think about. Are there ways that as we are thinking about the next time we are in office, that we can write legislation in ways that give more authority people to make choices more expeditiously? Pod Save America brought you by blinds.com. If you ever have thought about upgrading your window tree, but didn't want the hassle.Blins.com is here to change the game. They're the only company that lets you shop custom blinds and shades online that backs it up with professional in-home measure and install services. Tired of waiting around all day for an in-home design appointment just to get a

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too, which is about the habit of government and how it works and about the people that are in charge. Because not only have our ability to do big projects slowed or stopped, they've also become far more expensive. And there's a lot of different reasons. And when people try to dig into what the causes are, it's actually kind of often hard to find exactly what it is because people will say, oh, well, it's too deferential to unions. But they've got unions in Spain or it's environmental protections. environmental protections in Italy, or it's because we're so overbuilt. They can build subways in Rome. And sometimes what it does seem to boil down to, in part, is a kind of habit and expertise. And I do wonder part of this is, like, we've made being a city administrator or someone kind of in

charge of parts of these bureaucracies, just a less fulfilling and kind of empowered role. But that also means we don't have kind of the people in place who kind of were the kinds of people that in the past might have gone into that that work because they were excited about the possibility of using government to do good. And I do wonder how much of this is going to take, even if we had the right policies, a lot of time to get ourselves out of. So that may be true. I'm working, this is not in the book, but it's something that I'm working on now. And I've just been thinking about it for now a month or two, and it's on my mind perpetually. I can't exactly figure it out.

Great. That's pitball, you know? Okay. We've gone. Absolutely. There's a new line that's opened, a new railroad line that's opened between Boston and New Bedford, Massachusetts. New Bedford is a historically sort of a beaten down old industrial city on the south coast of Massachusetts that has not had rail service.

It's one of the few cities that has not been connected to Boston. And it took them 35 years, but they finally opened the rail line. And there was a meeting that I've heard about in 2007 where MassDOT, the Department of Transportation, which intended to build this line, called a meeting of all the stakeholders who were involved. And they called a couple of Indian tribes. And they called the Massachusetts environmental groups. They called the Army Corps of Engineers who are responsible for water quality. and they called the Environmental Protection Agency. So it's a Massachusetts, it's called a meeting.

They're sitting at the head, but they've got these two federal agencies. And one of the routes that was under consideration was a route that was most direct, and it went through a swamp, a swamp that had vernal pools. I didn't know what a vernal pool. A vernal pool is a pool that only is wet during the spring. And they're important because turtles can lay eggs in the water during the spring, and they are then protected from predators in the water. And those turtles, in this case, the Eastern Boc Turtle is endangered.

And so those vernal pools are important ecologically. And the guy from the EPA is very worried about these vernal pools. And if you were to run this train through. And this became, I learned, like a real issue of contingent. The EPA really wants to protect these vernal pools and these turtles. And like, I remember hearing this story for the first few times. and people sort of rolling their eyes about the turtle guy. And like, like, like, really, like, these poor people in New Bedford don't have access

to these great jobs in Boston. And, like, it's going to be a much longer commute if you avoid this swamp. And, like, there's sort of, like, a real frustration that, like, the EPA, are you really going to, like, force these, like, that's great housing for people in Boston who are starred for housing. Like, like, how much are these turtles really worth? And then I began thinking about the guy from the EPA who's sitting there. Like, I think he's an older guy, probably took the job at the EPA, maybe like not long after the power broker came out.

Like, right in this age where, like, America has woken up to the degree to which the country has just totally destroyed much of the country's environment. Just to, you know, in every case, we've chosen economic expediency over the environment, like just destroyed whole. you know, forests and deforest, just did terrible damage. And his, he'd taken this job and, like, probably, like, had joined the EPA because he was going to speak up for these animals who couldn't speak up for themselves. He was going to protect. Speak up with that turtle. He was the turtle, and he was proud of it, right?

Like, and he was going to stand up. Moreover, like, he said at that meeting, if he had said, all right, I'll let you run that train line through my turtle habitat, right? he'd gone back to the EPA and told his boss, like, I can only imagine that, like, they would have been, like, our mission is to protect the, you can't just unilaterally. And then, if news got out that the EPA had given up on their turtles, they would have been subject to a lawsuit from the Friends of the Wilderness, who were, right? Like, there are a whole series of interventions that would have made it almost impossible for this

turtle guy to actually come to some sort of collaborative solution with. the Massachusetts transportation folks who want to do it. Now, there probably was some way to fix it where he could have said, listen, I'll let you take this little portion of the turtle habitat. If you buy me a bunch of private land and we'll make that a new turtle, right? That's why things are so expensive here, right? Is that we will buy it off, right? Like, why are things expensive in the U.S.?

Because each time you find a barrier, there is a way to have it all, but it's a, It's expensive, right? Like, like, oh, there's an old Indian burial ground. We need to avoid that. Or we need to properly move the, move the, the, the, the site to a, to a, have it rebary. I mean, there are all sorts of things that we are trying to be conscious of. We're not making tradeoffs.

And we don't have a great system for that. But, but between just allowing Robert Moses to run rampant through the, the South Bronx and destroy a borough of New York City. And on the other hand, doing nothing so that we are, you know, millions and millions of units short of housing and unable to take advantage of the clean energy revolution so that we have more affordable, clean electricity. And, you know, the Acela train is, you know, running at a third the pace of the TGV and running between Paris and, you know, we're way behind China and Japan. I mean, like, we can get this stuff going, but at root, this is a question of, are we willing to make the tradeoffs?

And are we willing to create systems that allow us to do that? Yeah, it sounds like part of what you're circling is the idea that people need to have their voice, but not a veto. And that at different points along their way, there needs to be individuals empowered to make final decisions. Maybe not one person at the top, but individuals making decisions. You know, here in Los Angeles right now, there was just a debate in the city council. So a couple years ago, Los Angeles passed Measure ULA. I don't know if familiar you are with this, but it was a transfer tax for when properties over a certain amount were sold.

Roughly, I'm going to get the number slightly wrong, but it's like a roughly 4%. There's a tax that kicks in at $5 million, a tax that kicks in at $10 million. I think it's roughly 4%, and then 5%. But it turns out. it also applied, it's called the mansion tax, but also applied to multifamily apartment buildings. And so a lot of researchers looked at the data and they said it is pretty clear that the application of the tax to new apartment buildings has probably cost the city far more in affordable housing units than the revenue has allowed the city to build.

And so in the city council, there was a proposal. The proposal was to delay the tax on new. family apartment new apartment buildings for that have been constructed in last like 15 years and it would cut revenue that the city wants and needs by 8 that's a trade-off right in order to allow the construction of multifamily apartment buildings you would lose 8% of revenue on what the tax had been collecting an extremely contentious debate and it is now as of right now tabled because it would need to be passed by the city council so that it could be put to a vote by the city

in order to be ratified as a citywide ballot measure. And the amount of consternation in both directions, it is a gift to developers, the infighting about it has basically left Los Angeles, kind of where it is right now with a measure designed to create more affordable housing in all likelihood preventing the construction of vast amounts of affordable housing. and there are so many people who want to fix this, but they live in the system that they are in. And forget passing a small reform like this. The system, even if everybody involved wanted to have a version of what you're describing

with a person who could be empowered at some level to address some of this, the system itself now has so many points of failure that the vetoes that exist would prevent that from happening. And I just don't know how we get out of this kind of doom loop. I mean, what's so interesting to me, I hear that. And, like, certainly you feel that on the federal level as well, right? Like, how, I mean, it feels super weird to me to be a progressive who sees what Donald Trump is doing and, like, finds it horrifying. And then it's, like, writing on his little computer, like, I think that we should give the federal government more power and more discretion to make decisions.

Like, I, like, I hear myself seeing what's happening. Like, I, I hear what I'm saying, and I can hear people being like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, like, the guys, like, look, what he's doing in Minnesota? Like, what do you mean you want to give more discretion to the federal government? And, um, and of course, like, my answer is, like, you know, in order to have more faith in government, you need to see that government works. And like, so, like, in the scheme of things, the reason that we have, you have. Trump is because people have seen government not work. So they went to an orange madman to like to fixings, right?

Like the worst thing's got, like they finally just wanted someone to break all the rules. Or another, like people just given how little government changes or does, they don't really think of government having a big impact in their lives. And so this feels like a TV show. But the thing that I do say, which I hope provides some sort of comfort, you know, when the progressive movement was born at the turn of the 20th century, it was at a moment when the federal government was small, when

almost everything felt broken like that there were trusts and like railroads and steel barons and like private industry was huge and government like was not built to handle it. Government was corrupt. Like, you know, like the federal government

was like the U.S. Postal Service and like a really corrupt pension system for people who like hadn't fought the Civil War, but we're collecting pensions. Like, it was a mess. And people realized that. And the progressive movement was born essentially to say, like, we've got all this sort of scientific knowledge. We know that, like, we need better sanitation systems and transportation systems and electricity systems and regulatory systems. And we need something better. And so, like, from this, like, mish-mash of incompetent bureaucracy, like, we created what became the New Deal. Like, there's

no way in like 1906 you could have imagined the breadth and depth of the bureaucracy that was the New Deal or that existed in the 1950s, let alone like Robert Moses and the Triborough Bridge or the Tennessee Valley Authority. Like the idea that government bureaucracy could be this competent, deficient, like powerful or that like Robert Moses could be unimpeachable, right? Like to think that in 19, you know, in the first decade of the 20th century, there would eventually be the man that Robert Carrow would describe, you know, in the 1950s as like this, this, I mean, this powerful 50 years later, unimaginable. To read the power broker in 1973, 74, and this sort of idea of an establishment figure

who's so unimpeachable, who, you know, who Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman and the Chicago seven, like when they were protesting these. sorts of characters on the outside of the 1968 DNC and like talking about the man and the establishment and you know up against the wall motherfucker and right like like this this sort of notion then the port here on statement and see right like this sort of notion that there was this establishment the that that sort of hovered over American life and that was impossibly large and beyond our beyond anyone's control um that that that powerful institution would 50 years later,

like, be completely incompetent, but, like, there's no established. Right? Like, like, like, we can't, we can't build any, we can't build housing. We can't build clean energy lines. We, like, like, think of the things that we can't do, then there's no one to turn to.

Like, we go through these periods in American life where the sort of the broader structure of power just completely changes. So right now, it feels like nothing can get done. There's no one to turn to. There's no way to make decisions. I think that 20, 30 years from now, we will have completely rebuilt some sort of governing

mechanism that makes it possible for us to do things. I don't know exactly how it's going to happen, but I feel pretty confident that, like, people aren't happy with this. They're not, like, they're not going to be happy with what we've got now. And, like, we will figure out a series of ways organically. through reforms, like ideas are popping, like the fact that Ezra and Derek's book did well, and Yoni Applebaum has a book, and Jen Polka has a book, and Nick Bagley's coming out. There's lots of literature coming out.

The books are, the books will save us. The books will save us. The books will save us. All right, we're going to take a break, but before we do, we just launched a brand new show for paying subscribers, Pod Save America, Only Friends. It is a looser bi-weekly Pod Save America that John, Tommy, Dan, your favorite cricket host, and I may or may not record. completely in the nude. I don't think that's right. But to find out if we're clothed or not,

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Go to Stamps.com and use code PSA to PSA to get 60 days risk-free. 60 days gives you plenty of time to see exactly how much time and money you're saving on every shipment. that's stamps.com code PSA. That's stamps.com. Code PSA. It's interesting because then the other side of this is an effective governing bureaucracy, effective institutions. Those are not an end. They're a means to an end. And part of why the New Deal was able to be stood up so quickly is because a Democratic Party had a vision for what the role of government needed to be in an emergency. And that built not only public enthusiasm and legitimacy and support, it created a phalanx of people at every level who wanted to be a part of it, intellectuals, experts, managers, all the way down to people who just wanted

to work as part of these, or needed work, by the way, as well. But that momentum around the goal, the mission of what the government was meant to do made it more possible for the government to be effective. How much of what we're dealing with here is a need for a Democratic party, a progressive movement, to have a clear understanding of what the goal is, whether it's high-speed rail or wind or a better education system or better health care system. Like how much of this could follow a kind of broader, more enthusiastic democratic mission? I think mission is a huge part of it. I also think, like, to the point you made earlier, lots of people graduate from college and imagine that they're going to go into.

to public service, take a job at one of these agencies, and like do great things. I think that if you had gone to engineering school in the 1940s and gotten a job as a Moses man, inside the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority in New York and like spent years working for Bob Moses, who was imperious as a boss, but like gave you a great deal of, you know, freedom to design parks.

And like you could end your, retirement, like you probably wouldn't have made as much if you'd gone to a private engineering firm, but you could show your grandchildren, like, I built that playground or I, you know, designed that bridge or what, like, like, that would have been very satisfying. I think that people today who go into public service and go work at what seems like a very important bureaucracy, spend their days frightened. They're frightened that they're going to get their boss in trouble. They're frightened that they're going to get, you know, their boss is going to yell at by an appropriator because they did something wrong or that they're going to make a decision that's going to get

them subject to a NEPA lawsuit or that's right that the that someone in the office of management and budget is going to screw, or that they don't have real authority to make the change that they want to do and they come out after a bunch of years and like, I was just pushing paper around. Like I wasn't really given the sort of leash to make the positive change that I wanted to do. I think like that is an extension of the changes we made after the Robert Moses era and that we over did. I think we want to reempower people who go into public service to be able to make those sorts of changes. And you'll get different kinds of people who go into service that way. We're going to make mistakes.

Like government is going to make mistakes. It's going to be controversial. Like people are not going to like it in all cases. But like, I mean, I think that there's like there's so many things that we need. to do and that only government can do. But I think it's a very hopeful, I think it's a very hopeful moment for all that we're all sort of aghast of what's happening in Washington right now that sort of the level of potential is really remarkable.

Yeah, I do. It's interesting because, you know, I read your piece on sort of lessons from the way Trump operates. And I feel the same conflict that you describe there and describe here. But there is some part of me that takes from it that one thing we need elected officials to do sometimes is to tell the lawyers to fuck off and just say, no, no, fuck off. And we're going to try this. We're going to push the bounds a little bit and then get stopped a little more frequently. Because I do think that part of this is a style of consensus leadership, a kind of like front of the classroom style of Democrat that doesn't want to seem like they're breaking the rules. But But I say that, I think, am I describing basically something that if it were towards a policy goal I would hate, I'd be disgusted by. But I wonder if there was something in the middle here where we need to somehow, you know,

we have to sometimes we need to go out to want to leave the house. You know, we have to like start acting as though we live in a world in which things can happen, pretend as if things can happen and then suddenly they might. I mean, yes, and I've heard that several. I mean, you know, people saying, you know, in order to plan a new subway line, we need to study the alternatives. How many do we really need to study? Like, we know in the end that we're not going to dig up this particular street. We're not going to go, you know, we're not going to dig up downtown, right?

So, like, I understand that that is a theoretically a possibility, but we're not going to spend $100,000 doing, and six months. looking at, you know, which streets in which order we would dig up to do that possibility. We're just going to set it aside. And we're actually only going to study these three alternatives, right? Like that was something that someone maybe would sue saying, well, you didn't look at all the alternatives. But we could expedite that, right? Like there's an example of where a bureaucrat could tell a lawyer to F off, right?

Maybe there's a mild example of where, where, something like that, yeah, I think probably could work and we don't do it. Are there any Democratic politicians that you think are saying interesting or smart things about how this can work? Are there places where you think people are pushing this forward and pointing to way for how we make progressive governing work again? I'm going to say yes. You want me to name a bunch of politicians. I just think that lots of the new Dems. I mean, I think Dems, left, right, and center are trying to do this.

You're putting me on the spot here. Well, Mom Donnie, would you say Mom Dani's doing it? I think Mom Dani is trying to do it. Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've absolutely. I mean, you know, I think the way that Rom has looked at, like, what's happening in schools, right?

Like, there's sort of an obvious thing. Like, we've been having this stale conversation about charters and vouchers and, bathrooms and like like and he's like he's focused on like what are kids how are kids learning in schools like like that's the stuff that matters that feels to me like trying to push through the sort of arcane BS that we tend to talk about in our political dialogue I don't know if it's if it's right in line with this conversation but like that feels like a real conversation I mean, you know, Shapiro's identity nationally at the moment feels like it's really tied up in that 95.

He got that thing up so fucking quick. That was cool. I like that was. And I feel like Newsom has a similar story. He's going to build something even faster. He's not going to get, he's not going to lose in the road competition to Shapiro. Whitmer, fix the dance. I mean, anyway.

They're trying. They're trying, yeah. Everyone, I think people are catching on to this stuff. And I do hope that this becomes, like, I really do hope that this conversation can be a way for, for people on the left and the, you know, sort of in the more progressive circles and more modern circles to come together. You know, those, you know, if I'm not a single payer guy, but if I were a single payer person, I would think to get there, you have to believe that people will need to have faith that government is going to administer health care better than ETNA or CVS or whoever, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, like, whoever you're, right? And, like, right now, like, is your experience with government such that, like, you feel like you go into the DMS? And like that's a happy place like like like like are,

are those the people that you trust to do things, uh, in an expeditious way? And like like like, like, you know, the Rhode Island DMV. I'm from Rhode Island. I love those guys. Like my, my, my license has come up for renewal. And I just want to put that on the record. But, uh, but like generally I, I, I'm not sure that people have the experience in

seeing like if, if, if these guys. can't successfully accomplish the things that are already within their mandate. Why are we going to expand their mandate? So let's get these things done. And then let's have a discussion about whether government bureaucracies are better poised to accomplish for ordinary people of the things that they can't attain for themselves in the current environment. Yeah, I also think part of it too is having the confidence in a worldview in which

you can fight Trump's efforts to undermine the government without viewing it as a concession to want in another conversation talk about government's failures, ways it needs to improve, right, ways you could save money. And I think part of this too is there's a credibility gap. You know, Mamdani this week, obviously he's like, you know, he's the socialist menace that's gonna drive the billionaires to Florida, I suppose.

But then at the same time, he's signing an executive order to find ways, for government to save money. And he has the kind of credibility to do that because he has the trust over here. And I sometimes do think that mainstream Democrats, because they lack that kind of clear mission of what they're trying to achieve,

sometimes they're a bit squeamish about saying something that might sound like they're inviting a criticism from the left, which I think a part of our problem, our kind of our kind of soft democratic establishment does not have the kind of aggressive toughness that might make it more palatable to have them kind of pick some fights. I don't know. Yeah.

I don't like a call into the establishment. The establishment to me is like this old thing. Like there is no democratic establishment. We've got we've got we've got sort of. Well, it's all the mainstream center left democratic officials would be the group of people I'd be talking about that. I think sometimes feel a little bit unsure of what of who they're supposed to be. Okay.

Well take out the word establishment and I will and we're on the same page. Oh, great. And that's a perfect place. to leave it. Let's leave it there. Mark Dungleman, thank you so much for talk to me. I genuinely really enjoyed the book. It is called Why Nothing Works, Who Kill Progress, and how to bring it back? I think anybody who has either dipped into the abundance discourse or decided to avoid it, I think it's a good history to help you through it, even though I will say, and I will say it to your face because I sign the pod, how many fucking times you get to hammer the Hamiltonian Jefferson?

We're smart people. We're in the book. You got us. You got us. I got us. I'm selling us so fucking hard. Sometimes I got confused. So I was just guiding myself. But thank you so much. Thanks. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, substack, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode

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