- Good evening, my name is Sadia Sindhu
and I'm the Executive Director
of the University of Chicago
Center for Effective Government
at the Harris School of Public Policy.
The Center for Effective
Government was founded in 2019
with an ambitious but vital mission,
to strengthen democratic institutions
and improve the capacity of government
to solve public problems.
It is my pleasure to welcome you all
to the last installment
of the fourth annual Harris
School of Public Policy
"Summer of Social Impact" series.
This series explores innovative approaches
to make social impact
on major policy issues
facing our society, from
Chicago to the world.
The series showcases the vital role,
data and analytics play in
finding solutions to help reduce
inequality, strengthen our democracy,
create a more sustainable
environment and address
other pressing challenges of our time.
Tonight, we have about
800 attendees registered,
including alumni and
friends, current students,
members of the Civic Leadership Academy.
And we're especially
excited to have so many
of our incoming students participating
in tonight's discussion.
Before I introduce our speaker,
I'd like to go over
some quick housekeeping.
Tonight's discussion
will be a conversation,
and we welcome and encourage
you all to participate.
You can do so by using the Q&A function
at the bottom of your screen.
And now without further ado,
I'm delighted to welcome my colleague
and tonight's featured guest,
Professor William Howell.
William Howell is the Director
of the Center for Effective Government,
co-host on "Not Another Politics" podcast
and the Sydney Stein
Professor in American Politics
at the University of Chicago.
He is Chair of the
Political Science Department
and holds additional appointments
in the Harris School of
Public Policy and the college.
Professor Howell has written widely
on separation of powers issues
in American political institutions,
especially the presidency.
He's the author or
co-author of seven books,
and his most recent book,
"Presidents, Populism and
the Crisis of Democracy,"
written with Terry Moe,
is a topic of tonight's conversation.
Professor Howell is the recipient
of many academic awards,
including the Legacy Award
for enduring research
on executive politics.
He was recently inducted
into the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences.
Before coming to the
University of Chicago,
Professor Howell taught in
the government department
of Harvard University and the
political science department
at the University of Wisconsin.
He holds a PhD in political
science from Stanford University
and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.
When Professor Howell is not concerned
about the state of our democracy,
he likes to tweet about Taco Bell.
Welcome, how are you?
- I'm good, I'm good,
I'm glad you got Taco Bell
in there, that's important.
- I feel like I should.
It seemed appropriate to
given that we have you here.
But this talk today at the
Harris School is the first stop
on your Midwest leg of
your virtual book tour.
And rightfully so, so I've gotta ask
you're a political scientist,
you're at the Harris School,
you're Chair of the Department
at the University of Chicago
and you care deeply about this field.
In reflecting on the value
of graduate education today
in public policy, why is it
important for our students
to be thinking about
political institutions?
- So terrific question.
It's a big, broad thing that
we in the Harris School,
the community of political
economists think a lot about.
And the short answer,
there's lots of long answers,
academics are good providing long answers,
I'm gonna try to be succinct.
The short answer is that it's
not enough just to identify
what good public policy
is, just to identify
what the optimal policy looks like.
That there's a lot of
work that goes into that
and that's crucial work,
and we at the Harris school
have got terrific folk
investigating all kinds of issues
ranging from immigration
policy to healthcare policy,
to issues involving climate
change and on, and on.
But we've got to figure
out how those policies
actually get enacted and
how they get implemented.
And for that, we need to have
an understanding of the venues
in which policy is
written and implemented.
We have to have
understandings of legislatures
and executives and
courts and bureaucracies
in order to be impactful.
So we're not interested
in just kind of equipping
our students with good
ideas about what could be,
we're interested in empowering
them to get out there
and make a real difference.
And the fluid economists are
really focused on those issues
of institutional design,
because they care about
how we translate ideas
into actual meaningful policy change.
- And you've spent a
big part of your career
thinking about political institutions.
What motivated you to write
"Presidents, Populism and
the Crisis of Democracy,"
you and Terry Moe, I
should say a co-author.
- Yeah, so Terry was my
dissertation advisor at Stanford,
so he's an old friend and
we've written together
for many years.
And separately and sometimes together,
we've written a lot on
separation of powers issues
and presidential power,
these kinds of things,
and we've done so as political scientists,
because we wanna understand
the way that politics works,
because it's of intrinsic interest.
And I'll say that the
election of Donald Trump,
we found that it sort of
raised like profound issues
that had to do with
challenges to our democracy,
the rise of populism within this country
and the need for institutional reform,
not just in light of Trump,
but in trying to make sense of
the kind of the preconditions
that laid the groundwork for
Trump's emergence to power.
We were worried about
the state of our country,
and we wanted to kinda
speak in a full throated way
and hopefully to a broader audience
than just our immediate
community of political economists
and political scientists,
about the way that the
presidency is currently designed
and its implications for the
policies that we observe.
- So in the book where you and Terry argue
that ineffective government
gave rise to populism,
Donald Trump and the crisis of democracy,
and the solution lies
in institutional reforms
that ought to make our
government more effective,
before we get to the latter
part of this argument,
I wanna spend some time
thinking about populism.
How do you all define populism?
- So it's a good question.
So I mean, a core part
of our argument is that,
Trump is a populist, right?
If you wanna understand Trump,
certainly what distinguishes
Trump from past presidents
is that it's the populism
that he channels.
And what we don't mean by
populism is the kind of way
that populism is discussed
in the popular media,
which is that populism is a
commitment to the little guy
and giving voice to those who are excluded
and expanding the
franchise hence providing
kind of government benefits
to people who are struggling.
That's when political scientists,
there are a lot of political scientists
who have studied populism and
they've devoted their lives
to studying it, that's not
what they have in mind.
Rather populists distinguished
themselves first,
by coming forward and saying,
look, they speak in a wholesale language
and offer a sweeping critique
of a political order.
They talk about the system
being broken, right?
The entire political regime,
the entire political order
being rigged and antiquated and corrupt.
And they do so with such sweeping language
that there's no space left
for constructive reform or adaptation.
And in fact, the work of a
populist is not to set to work
to reform the political order
so much as it is to so anger
and disaffection among the broader public
about this antiquated political order.
So it's about getting people to see if,
it's about continual disruption
and this persistently oppositional stance
that one takes to a political order.
That's what populists
do, and because of that,
because the order is a democratic order,
populism has profoundly
anti-democratic tendencies,
because the populist, I'm
saying this last thing,
I'm doing the academic
thing, I'm talking too long,
but here we go, right?
What the populace does is he says,
"Look that wreckage
over there is something
"that I stand apart from.
"I am the outsider so you
should vest your hopes
"and aspirations in me.
"I alone can fix it."
And that's profoundly dangerous.
That kind of sensibility
is profoundly dangerous
when you're thinking
about how to cultivate
a healthy democracy.
- So you're gonna love this.
I'm gonna actually ask you to talk
a little bit more about this.
So most of the book tries to
establish the relationship
between populism and
ineffective government.
Can you build that out for us a bit more?
- Sure, so if what
populists do, is they offer
this sweeping undifferentiated critique
of a political order.
They come out and they
say everything's broken,
everything's rigged, the
so-called experts in the swamp
have it out for you.
If that's the kind of
rhetoric that they employ,
the question is, under what conditions
will that rhetoric resonate?
Will it kind of take hold?
And we suggest in the book
that ineffective government
provide the kind of
preconditions for populists
to rise to power.
And by ineffective government,
we don't mean liberal or conservative,
it's about a government
that fails to solve problems
that pluralities, majorities,
the American public
broadly expects to see the
government take action on.
And in the aftermath of persistent failure
to meet the challenges in this era
of globalization, immigration,
the disruptions caused by automation,
these big structural
shifts to our economy,
the failure of the government to meet
these kinds of challenges
creates real harm.
And when that harm isn't
adequately addressed
by a government, again,
it lays the groundwork
for somebody to come forward and to say,
"It isn't just that the
government is broken,
"it's that they have it out for you,
"and that you should like see
"this government is illegitimate
"and that they don't
have your best interest.
"And again, you should vest your interests
and your hopes and aspirations in me."
- You spoke to this just
a little bit right now,
but it's not necessarily
a Democratic government
or Republican government,
but really just thinking about
our government as a whole
that has been ineffective.
Can you talk about periods in
which Republicans held power
and Democrats held power
and where these issues
have really persisted?
- Yeah, I mean, a big part
of the argument of this book
is to say that they're
big modern challenges,
and big modern challenges
have been playing out for decades,
having to do with the
rise of globalization
and big changes in immigration flows.
And again, automation
and the job displacements
caused by it.
This isn't something
that arose last Tuesday,
and that we're all reeling from.
These are developments
that have been played out over decades.
And the developments that to be clear,
offer all kinds of benefits, all three,
I mean, they're not undifferentiated
'cause of sort of threats and harm,
nothing but harm to the country.
In fact, they deliver a whole lot of good.
There's reason to embrace all three,
but there are communities
that are differentially hurt by them.
And the persistent failure of Democrats
and Republicans alike to
not just kind of speak
to those harms, but to
meaningfully attend to them,
has created all kinds of
disaffection in the broader public.
And it's for that reason
that Donald Trump in 2016,
he runs, he benefits not
just from being an outsider
from politics, but being an outsider
from the Republican party.
That his critique was of the
political order broadly, right?
The DC establishment.
And well, he's captured
the Republican party.
We're watching that this week,
but he as an outsider,
was able to kind of make a
set of claims that resonated
precisely because there
was all kinds of hurt
and anxiety that communities
had felt for a long time.
- So I think, especially in light
of who occupies the oval office today,
you and Terry argue that the answer
to an effective government
isn't the executive branch.
What is it about the
presidency that makes this so,
and I hope we can linger
on this for a little bit,
'cause I think this is
something that's really hard
for folks to grasp, because
I think President Trump
when we ask this question
or when this topic comes up.
- Yeah, so if Trump is
the threat to democracy,
isn't the solution to shut him
down and shut the office down
that he occupies?
And to be clear, there
are very real threats
that presidents, particularly
demagogic presidents
can present to a democracy.
There are reasons to fear the
concentration of authority
in any one individual and
to see kind of vast powers
to that individual.
This is a theme
of kind of American
intellectual political history
going back all the way to the founding.
Yes, yes, but back up
a moment and say again,
what is it that allowed
somebody like Trump
to rise to power?
Well, what it was, is a government
that could persistently
fail to solve problems.
That to attend to the harm
caused by globalization,
the anxiety that people
felt about immigration,
and more broadly still,
to attend to issues
like climate change,
like structural increases in inequality
between the rich and
the poor and on and on.
And then so then we need to say,
is that if what you wanna
do is combat populism,
not just get Trump out of
office or diminish the office,
but combat the threat of populism,
what you then need to do is
think about how do we build
a set of institutions
that are more effective
at solving problems?
Like, what does a new
political order look like
that enables the government
to do a better job of say,
attend to the threat of a pandemic,
so that we don't have
185,000 people and counting,
dying because of this disease.
So and there, the presidency
and the presidential power,
it turns out to be like really essential.
It tends to be really important
because presidents offer a
different kind of leadership
than what we observe within Congress.
Presidents, by institutional design,
pay more attention to the interest
of the country as a whole.
They pay more attention to
the long-term implications
of policy change.
And so if you're looking for
the kind of leadership we need
to meet complex problems
like climate change,
like globalization,
then we need to find ways of
leveraging the presidency,
and to do so, though, responsibly.
So there's the fear for sure, that's real,
but there also is the promise.
And if all we do is pay
attention to the fear
and snuff out the promise,
we won't have a government
that works going forward,
and we will remain persistently vulnerable
to the rise of populism,
not just with Trump, but future populists.
- Can you say a little bit more
about why the president
is particularly adept
at attending to these
issues versus say, Congress?
- Yeah, so this is something
which we write about in the book
and was a theme of the previous
book that Terry and I wrote,
which came out in 2016, called "Relic,"
in which we sort of distinguish
legislatures from presidents.
I mean, look, if you're not going
to completely append
the entire constitutional order and say,
"All right, let's go over
to a parliamentary system,"
you're gonna say, "We've got
to work with who we've got."
Then when it comes to problem solving,
what we really have is either
the presidency or Congress
or some kind of combination of the two.
And when it comes to Congress,
Congress does a really
good job at some things,
it provides lots of attention
to the immediate short-term
interests of local constituents.
And that's by design.
When you have 535 voting members
across two chambers in a
collective decision-making body
that represent 435 districts in 50 states,
what you can expect them is to channel
the most sort of vocal
and most organized
interests of the communities
and the jurisdictions to which
they're held accountable.
And they do that one at a time.
And that's fine and well.
What we wanna do is sort
of have representation
of local interests, short-term interests.
But when, what we wanna do is
say, attend to climate change,
which requires a comprehensive, systemic,
coordinated change to meet a problem
that doesn't know boundaries,
district boundaries,
it is much more problematic.
And if what you're gonna
do is hold out for Congress
to get its act together
in order to meaningfully
address that issue,
good luck, right?
Good luck.
This isn't to say that
presidents always get it right.
They don't, they get it
wrong in all kinds of ways.
And some presidents won't
recognize climate change.
Our current one will
recognize climate change
as something that
requires immediate action
or a forceful action,
but it's our best shot.
- Thanks, I also wanna remind our audience
that they can submit questions.
I've got a few that I'm going through,
but if you have questions
that directly relate
to what we're talking about
or you're curious about,
please feel free to
submit them for the Q&A.
So turning to the specific
reforms that you and Terry
get behind in this book,
can you talk to me about a couple of them
and then also highlight
the ones that you think
are most politically
opportune in this environment?
- Yeah, good, yeah, okay,
so what does it mean?
Okay, so if we think about
Congress and presidents
offering different kinds of leadership,
and there's a reason to try
to leverage the presidency
on the one hand,
because they offer a
different kind of leadership
that we need, on the one hand,
but we also wanna recognize
that they represent a threat, right?
There's a fear, there's
a promise and the fear,
that then when we think
about institutional reform,
we say what are things
that will by leveraging
the kind of leadership the
presidency signed to offer,
will we improve the
effectiveness of government,
on the one hand?
But on the other,
when a demagogue occupies the White House,
how do we ensure that the powers
that are available to him,
someday, her, are not used to
unwind our democracy, right?
Not used to really kind
of degrade the polity.
That's the two-prone test, right?
That's any reform we wanna
think about has to satisfy
those two things.
It's not about, a little bit of this,
a little bit of that,
it's like, there's two questions
you should be asking yourself
with regard to each one.
Oh, we've got a long list, Sadia.
How far can I go?
So let me say-
- Stay with me today and
then I can put them back.
- Like introductions.
- Fine, let's do it.
- Okay, one experience.
And it's the only one that we identify,
but it's an important one, it's a big one,
which is to expand
the president's agenda-setting
power in Congress.
That what we propose is that
the president be empowered
to propose a bill that he
can introduce to Congress,
the legislators that are forced
to vote on within a set period of time
on an up-or-down basis.
They don't get to introduce amendments,
they don't get to lard up
the president's initiative
with all kinds of carve
outs and exceptions
and goodies for the
organized interest back home
to make it politically palatable.
They've kind of, they
don't have to support it,
they can kill it, but
they gotta vote on it.
And so that's a way to kind of structure,
to leverage the kind of
perspective that presidents
stand to offer and
thereby structure debates
that frankly are not
happening within Congress,
that are true to the challenges
that we as a country face.
That's in the service of
leveraging the promise.
Lots of reasons for fear,
presidents can make a mess
out of the bureaucracy
by politicizing it.
And we've seen that frankly,
across the lots of
presidents of the modern era,
it's really picked up several ratchets
with the current president.
And one, there's been a
bunch of research done
by political scientists who show
that there are these trade offs
between increasing reliance
on political appointments
and decreasing competence
within the bureaucracies
where those appointments are made.
And so on the one hand, it's like,
that's a power that
actually degrades competence
on the one hand, and when you
have a demagogue in office,
you can expect him again, someday her,
to exercise those powers in the service
of plugging in his cronies and showing up
his base of power and using
it for anti-democratic ends.
So reduce the level of the politicization
of the bureaucracy.
Increasingly throw out a couple more.
Increase the independence
of the justice department
and reduce the opportunities
for political meddling
in the justice department
and intelligence agencies.
We ought to altogether get
rid of the pardon power,
which we see it has nothing to do
with effective government.
And you see that when a
demagogue occupies the office
or a populist occupies the office,
it's used for political stunts.
We just saw one last night,
in order to shore up his base,
not to attend to problems, but
in order to feather his nest.
Do you wanna say, but you also asked me,
see, I'm going on too long,
but so asked about like,
which one is most politically salient?
- At this moment, yes.
- At this moment.
So the one area where I
think we could make progress,
this another check on the presidency,
has to do with the emergency powers.
So presidents have vast
authority to exercise
these unilateral powers as they see fit,
but they can also declare
emergencies, whenever they like.
And in declaring emergencies,
lay claim to new powers,
which Trump has done in waging
a trade war against China
and in building the wall
on our Southern border.
And Congress for institutional
reasons of its own,
some of which are partisan,
many of which are just
embedded into the logic
of the institution itself,
rarely gets its act together
and to say, pass a law that says,
"No, this isn't an emergency,"
and to formally retract those powers.
But what you could do,
what we should do is require a president
anytime he announces a national emergency,
she then go before Congress
and secure an authorization
within a set period of time.
It could be 15 days, it could be 30 days.
There's reason for flexibility here,
but you've got to go and
get that authorization.
And if you fail to get it,
then the emergency
declaration promptly lapses
and whatever powers the president
lay claim to are lifted.
And you could also say having
gotten the authorization,
you have to get it reauthorized
at regular intervals going forward.
This would strengthen checks,
important checks on the
president's unilateral powers,
encourage congressional
involvement in these deliberations
and would be healthy for our democracy
and wouldn't come at the cost
of a less effective government.
It would be about forcing legislators
who often wanna hide under a
rock and avoid responsibility,
to come forward and to own up and to say,
"Yep, there is an emergency here,
"and I stand with the
president in his effort
"to address it or not."
That would be healthy
and it's something
which in the aftermath of this presidency,
I think there's an appetite
for, certainly among Democrats
and among certain segments
of the Republican party.
- So I'm gonna pause here
for a second, Howell,
'cause we're getting some
pushback on an earlier claim
that you had made about populism.
And this is coming from Caesar who asks,
"Is populism always bad?
"Is it always a threat to democracy?
"Aren't there ways in which
populism is a corrective
"to a liberal democracy?"
Do you think there is
room for an inclusionary
and democratic populism
or does it always have to be something
that's anti-democratic?
- Yeah, so we do not have
a long list of examples
of populists within the United
States or around the globe,
that when they rose to power and governed,
enriched their democracy,
enhanced their democracy.
Now to be clear,
what populists can do,
that initial critique
of a political order can
be generative, right?
The initial move can be
one that points to profound
and systemic harms caused
by a governing regime.
And that that can be
productive and constructive.
There's the possibility, it
opens up the possibility,
at least, for somebody to
come forward and to say,
"These people have been ignored,
"and they ought to be
brought into the polity
"and their interests
ought to be attended to."
The thing is that the
ploy that the populist,
as I've defined it,
that the populist makes is one,
again, where there's nothing but wreckage.
He speaks again in totally
undifferentiated terms
about the catastrophe that
is the political order.
And so that the only available solution
is to vest hopes and aspirations in him,
the individual, or her, the individual,
not to set to work and rolling
up their sleeves and saying,
"Let's reconstitute this political order.
"Like, let's set it right."
And for this reason,
I don't think Bernie Sanders
for one, is a populist.
Bernie Sanders offers a big critique,
but Bernie Sanders doesn't say,
"Vest all your hopes and
aspirations in me," right?
What Bernie Sanders is poised to do,
is where he, assume power, he would have,
I think all expectations
are he would have rolled up
his sleeves and said,
"Now we've got to
dramatically reconstitute
"the political order."
And so in that sense, as
I've defined populist,
whether it be a left-wing
or right-wing populist,
I don't see either on principle
or frankly, much as many
historical examples in Europe,
in Latin America,
where we find most of
the examples to turn to,
some in Africa,
hope that it's democracy-enhancing.
- Right, so a lot of political observers
and several of our attendees
today have recognized
the damage that has been done
to our institutions over
the last several decades,
but especially in the last four years.
In the Q&A, I'm seeing
some highlighted reforms
that are coming through,
and we've certainly
heard of others as well,
limiting the role of money in politics,
reducing polarization.
How has what you and
Terry are arguing about,
different from those
sort of existing reforms
in the democracy reform space?
- Yeah, godly, I mean like the devil.
Let's first postulate that,
like our government
generally is in trouble,
our democracy is in trouble,
and there's no one solution.
Like there's no magic bullet
that's gonna set things right.
We think that presidents are the linchpins
of effective government
just as they represent very real threats.
And so we wanna focus on a
set of reforms that have to do
with altering the powers
that are given to presidents,
reshaping the nature
of presidential congressional relations,
presidential relations with
the administrative state.
But that's not to say that
there are additional layers
of harm done by say, the polarization
of the two major parties
or the rise of money in politics.
And the work of rebuilding our government
and standing up for and
nurturing our democracy is work
that's gonna have to be
done on lots of fronts.
What I would say though,
is that the kinds of reforms
that Terry and I are talking about,
have to do with matters
of institutional design.
I mean, they're embedded in
the very structure of Congress,
in the very structure of the presidency.
They're not recent political developments
that for instance have to do with the fact
that Republican party is
significantly more conservative
today than it was in the early 1970s
and the Democratic party
is somewhat more liberal
than it was in the 1970s.
And that creates a kind of
gridlock and partisan posturing
and introduces a variety of pathologies.
Those are real, right?
Those present real challenges
and we've got to find a way
to get these two parties
to speak to one another productively.
And thus far, I think in
the main we're failing.
But even if you get rid of polarization,
and even if you get rid
of money in politics,
you're still going to have a Congress
that consists of 535 voting members
that have all kinds of
institutional reasons
to pay attention to their
organized interests back home.
And that trying to solve the
kinds of complex national
and international problems
that stand before this country,
will not do when we wanna find
kind of leadership to
meet those challenges.
That's not to say that we
should shut down Congress.
That's not my argument, right?
It's to say that presidents
should be included
among the agenda setters.
We need to find ways of
leveraging the unique perspective
that presidents have,
if we're going to meet
these profound challenges.
And that again, so that's
embedded in the institutions
and is born of the constitution
in the way that money
and politics and polarization is not.
- I'm surprised you
haven't brought it up yet.
So I'm just gonna ask you about it.
You argue that we need
another progressive movement
devoted to institutional change
and political rejuvenation.
This is a document that
you and Terry have carried
in this book, and you've
also mentioned elsewhere,
our center, The Center
for Effective Government,
is dedicated to this space as well.
How do you see the work that
we're doing at the center
and the work that you're spearheading
on the scholarship side,
serving most effectively in this space?
- Yeah, I mean, when you reflect back
on American political history
and trying to think of moments
when we as a country took
stock of the capacity
of our institutions to solve problems,
to try to build a more modern,
more effective government,
one where we don't simply
rely upon the handiwork
of our nation's founders, and
instead own the challenges
that we face and try to
reconstitute our institutions
so that we can solve problems.
We don't have many
examples of this happening
over a sustained period of time.
And there are moments
usually in the aftermath
of some kind of either illegal
or highly controversial war
or scandal, think Watergate and Vietnam
and the kind of congressional
resurgence that we saw
in the early 1970s.
The progressive period provides,
maybe that was over about a 30-year period
in the late 19th century,
early 20th century,
where a whole host of people,
some elected officials,
journalists, academics, lawyers,
people in business kind of
gathered together and said,
"You know what?
"This political order
that we've inherited,
"isn't up to the task of
meeting these challenges
"of industrialization or these
challenges of immigration
"or these challenges
that are presented to us
"associated with the
emergence of the United States
"on the world stage."
It's not up to the task
and we need to think
about how do we not have
a administrative state
that's just filled with a
bunch of hacks that were in,
people appoint their political cronies
and their political supporters
to privileged positions
so that they can draw a paycheck,
but have a professional civil service,
like that's born of the progressive era,
it played out over decades.
And that kind of work,
which is the kind of work of our center,
is to try to figure out how
do we bring people together
to talk seriously about and
get traction behind reforms
that might make our government better.
Not in a liberal way or in
a conservative way, right?
But make it capable of meeting
the kinds of challenges
that stand before our country
and that our people, that
citizens expect action
to occur on.
And when action doesn't happen, right?
That's where we ended up where we are now,
which is that you've got
all kinds of folk who think
DC is sold out,
bought and paid for and
corrupt to the core.
And so let's turn to a populist
because maybe he'll deliver us.
Is to say, "No, we need
you the hard work,"
of saying, "We care about this democracy.
"We care about the people
who live within it,
"and we need to find a set
of institutions that allow us
"to bridge our differences
"so that we can more effectively meet
"the challenges that stand before us."
They did that in the progressive
era, they tried to do that.
They didn't get it all right.
But that was fit at the center of the task
that they assume for themselves.
- And-
- My next question-
- [William] You wanna resuscitate that.
- Yeah, so, I mean, you've
already started talking about it,
but the progressive movement
was wonderful in many ways,
but you talk about significant blinders
that the movement had.
And I remember when I
was reading the book,
I was thinking about this summer
in the last several months
that we'd experienced.
And I wonder if you
might be willing to speak
to some of the blinders that
we might have in this moment
as we're trying to have
another progressive era,
another progressive movement.
What are you thinking about,
and do you think others should
be concerned about as well?
- So let us first recognize
that there are profoundly
ugly and disturbing strains
that also ran through
the progressive movement,
like eugenics and racism was
rampant in certain quarters.
I would say in addition,
look, to the extent that it
was an elite-driven movement,
any elite-driven movement
can lose its way.
And it can lose sight of the people
that it ostensibly claims
to be speaking on behalf of.
And it can advance a set of reforms
that are profoundly misguided
and not take adequate stock of its own,
I mean, the blinder is
a recognition that you,
a failure to recognize that in fact,
you do have blinders, right?
To build in opportunities
for contested engagement,
that you need to speak with
people and engage people
who look different from you
and think differently from you.
Not so that you end up at
this kind of tepid compromise,
but so that you have a fuller
and richer understanding
about what the expectations
are of a public
of their government,
and about the limitations of
whatever institutional reform
that you want to advance.
The progressive certainly
had those limitations,
and to the extent that they
made headway on the problems
that they weren't grappling with,
they only went so far
and the world continued,
and the world became more complex
and the challenges before the government
became kind of even, I mean,
we went from an industrialized
country to a global economy
and all that that entails.
And so the idea that now we can
simply import what they did,
okay, so the founders didn't have it,
but the progressives had
it, that's foolhardy.
And so how do we then generate
this kind of conversation
in a sustained way, in a
meaningful way with people
who care about our politics,
and in a way that also is generative,
where the conversation can lead to action
and experimentation and
learning and adaptation, right?
'Cause whatever we roll out now,
I mean, I gave you a set
of reforms that Terry and I
think would be great.
We're missing something for sure, right?
Where something or there's some you put,
if you mess with the system over here,
is gonna have, in some
unintended consequence elsewhere,
and you need to be able to see that fully
and offer continual adaptation and change.
So yes, I think the
political challenge is,
how do we sustain that?
How do we sustain that?
Not just, how do you
jumpstart a willingness
to adopt a batch of reforms,
but how do you sustain,
particularly when these conversations
too often are lead-driven,
continued conversation
and critical reflection
on institutional reform.
It's hard to do but it's vital.
- While on that note,
what is a dysfunction of
our politics that keeps us
from coming together in the
service of effective government?
Specifically thinking about the folks
that are listening in
tonight, graduate students,
incoming students, alumni
of the Harris School,
what could they all do to make
government more effective?
- So let me say a few things
and then just stop me.
Say, "You've said enough Howell, right?"
But let me say a few things.
One is that particularly for the students
who are coming to the
Harris School and thinking
that they wanna, what concerns them
is the state of education
policy in the country,
and they wanna improve the learning
and educational opportunities for people
who are right now,
having a hard time of it
for one reason or another.
That to the extent that
they can set their eyes
on not just questions,
pedagogy or curricular changes
or what the optimal size of
a classroom is, but to think
about institutional reforms,
to how we govern schools,
to what powers we give to
mayors versus school boards,
to how the courts are
involved in making decisions
about what happens within schools,
that this kind of,
what do we call it?
Policy entrepreneurship, this
kind of leadership is needed
if what we wanna do is
really change lives.
We need to think about
altering institutions.
So part of it is an
expansion of our imagination.
It's not just again thinking
about what the optimal policy is,
is thinking about how policy
is made and implemented,
and that we should set to
work on changing how policy
is made and implemented.
And that's part of it.
But there are all kinds of things
that get in the way of that,
worship of the constitution, that's one.
The fact that as soon as I say the words
in institutional form, like people's eyes
kind of glaze over a little bit,
like, what are you talking about?
I'm not sure what that is,
but when you talk about right-
- We're now feeling it.
- I know, and yet it's so
vital, it's so essential, right?
So I think part of it is
training people's attention
on the importance of the issue
and getting them to think
analytically about it.
One more, which is, that
there is a pathology
in our politics,
which is born in no small
part of polarization
between the two parties
wherein each side says,
"Look, I'm happy to give more power
"to a particular institution,
whatever that might be,
"as long as one of my
own occupies it, right?
"But as soon as somebody
from the opposition party
"assumes that office,
"well, then I'm gonna do
everything I can to roll it back,
"and to decry gross abuses
of power left and right,
"and to say, we've gotta shut it down."
And that kind of argument
isn't available to us
in a democracy.
There are losers in the
aftermath of election,
so we have to live with the
consequences of those losses
and set to work on winning once again.
But in a world in which I'm
not willing to either vest
or take away authority,
I mean, my willingness
is strictly a function
of whether my expectations
about whether or not
I and people like me will hold power.
It makes it awfully difficult
when the parties are as
polarized as they are,
and as equally balanced as they are.
It's a combination of those two things
to make headway on this set of reforms.
- So I'm gonna start,
I'm gonna turn this towards
the election that's coming up.
What is it about this election
that makes the stakes so high?
- Well, we were given lots of reasons
last week and this week
about why they are.
My own view is that they both
are onto something right,
which is that, to my mind,
the future of our democracy
is in some ways on the ballot.
If you believe that Trump is a populist
and that populism is anti-democratic,
and you're concerned about
the state of our democracy,
that four more years of
a Trump administration
is gonna have profound implications
for democratic norms and
practices about the meaning
of what a congressional subpoena is,
about the health and vitality
of an independent press and on, and on,
on the one hand.
But I say on the other,
if what you think is
that, if you're a democrat
or a liberal, you say,
"Oh, if we could just beat Trump
"and we get Biden in office,
then we're in the clear,"
then not so much, because if
all that Biden does is say,
what were once conservative policies
now will be liberal policies,
but doesn't set to work
on the kind of institutional
rejuvenation and reform
that we need in order to
protect our democracy,
we won't be making headway.
But there's a shot there,
there's an opportunity there
for a meaningful change.
And so like there's so much is at stake,
the health of our democracy,
the future of the Republican party,
and I think more generally,
the kind of the sentiments
of the broader electorate
about their government.
And I don't mean whether
they support or oppose
vis-a-vis one policy or another,
I mean their willingness
to view the government as
legitimate, to support and trust
in the government,
that the trend lines up until now
have been pointing downwards
and have been pointing
downwards for some time.
And I think this election
will have consequences
for the future trajectory
of those trend lines.
And if we get to a place where
both the left and the right
views the government as
illegitimate and broken
through and through to the core,
we're gonna be at a very
difficult place to dig out.
- I've got a question from an
audience member here, well.
Adam Nater asks a poll from CNN last week,
so that the most people
voting for Biden were doing so
because he's not Trump,
can we discuss the DNC
in our process for selecting candidates.
Each election it seems like
we have the wrong candidate
or not the candidate that
folks are most excited about.
This is an audience question.
- Yes, so we weight votes
both in primaries and general elections.
Each vote counts equally,
we don't weight them according
to the level of enthusiasm
with which they're cast.
And I think it is fair to
say that the average level
of enthusiasm cast for a Biden nomination
was lower than that cast
for a Warren nomination
or a Sanders nomination
in the primary season.
They're treated equally.
But look, I think part
of what is going on here
is a calculation on
the part of some voters
about who stands the best chance
of actually beating Trump.
So there are set of
calculations that go into that.
There also is a recognition,
and there's actually a fair bit
of political science done on this,
that more moderate candidates do better
in general elections than
do more extreme candidates.
This has been the best
work that's been done
on this, shows that moderation,
there are electoral gains to be had,
associated with moderation.
And then the third thing
that I would say is,
is that we're seeing this
in the competing portraits of Biden
last week and this week,
is that for many Americans,
they see Biden as somebody
who is experienced
and trustworthy and the right antidote
to a Trump presidency.
What we don't want to do is counteract
the populous revolution
with a far-left revolution
all by Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.
What we need is some sort of stability
and some attention to normalcy.
Now, this isn't me arguing,
that is in fact what we need.
Those views resonated among
portions of the Democratic base
and contributed to why
Biden got the nomination.
I'll say, if all that Biden does is say,
"I'm elected, now, I'm not
gonna send out those tweets,
"and I'm going to speak like a president,
"and so we're good."
- You mean Trump.
Biden sending out tweets
or Trump's sending out tweets?
- No, if all that Biden does is say,
"I'm not gonna behave the
way that Trump behaved,
"but we're good."
We are not good, right?
A lot of work lies ahead.
And so again, I mean, you asked early on,
like, why did we write this book?
In part, it was trying to speak to anybody
who cares about our democracy.
It was also an effort to try and speak
to Democrats in particular, to say,
"You have a chance to
make a difference here,
"but if all you do is
celebrating the rapture
"of defeating Trump and
think you're in the clear,
"you're fooling yourself
"because you're laying the groundwork."
As long as those big systemic
modern challenges persist,
and the government fails to address them,
the groundwork will be
laid for future Trumps
and future populists.
- So I have a question,
well, that kinda flips this a little bit.
I'm hoping it came from a CLA fellow,
'cause it sounds like a CLA fellow.
Why does reform have to start at the top?
What do local agencies
have responsibility for
in light of the rise of populism?
How can we disentangle poor implementation
of executive policy and procedure
from the management of those
funds at the ground level?
- I totally agree, it's
gotta be a CLA question.
I think it's a great question.
And we should say, CLA is
the Civic Leadership Academy,
and you and I run this program,
we bring together 15
members of the nonprofit,
50 members of the government
sector here in Chicago
for six months.
And these are just, I mean,
these are people to believe in.
I mean, these are people who get behind,
who cared deeply about this city of ours
and tried to make a difference.
I mean, it's one of our great joys
to be able to work alongside these folks.
And why does it have to come from the top?
It doesn't, it doesn't.
I will say there's important pressure
to be posed on people on the top.
It comes from the bottom to pay attention
to issues that aren't receiving attention
just as there's all kinds of need
for institutional reform within
city and county agencies.
And we talk about that in CLA.
There's work to be done
locally in order to address
the challenges that Chicago faces.
For sure, the idea that like,
our institutions are as they
ought to be here in Chicago
is foolhardy, right?
There's a lot of work
to be done here as well.
Okay, but what motivates this book,
is paying attention to
a set of big-time issues
like climate change,
like immigration flaws
from the global south
to the global north
that present profound
challenges to governments.
And there we need some
national leadership.
That's not to say that
there are other issues
where the impetus for change
should be coming locally,
and that we need to see
bottom-up change for sure.
And that isn't to say
that bottom-up change
can affect what goes on in
the national government,
but having written an awful
lot about presidential powers,
Terry and I both wanted to talk
about how we might
reconstitute the presidency,
but that's not to the
exclusion of all kinds of need
for institutional change
elsewhere in the national government
and at the state and local level as well.
- So we're at the 10-minute mark, well.
I will round out the conversation.
I wanna give you an
opportunity to say something
that you have not had the
chance to say thus far.
And then I've got a couple
of closing questions for you.
- Something that I haven't said thus far.
- About the argument of the book
that we have not quite gone into,
or that you wanna say a
little bit more about.
- I will say one thing which
we didn't talk much about,
but which is of a concern.
And when you asked
earlier about impediments
to institutional reform,
and I think right now,
and I'm gonna say something
which I don't mean to sound partisan,
but it's just trying to take stock
of the way things actually are.
And the way things actually are,
is that the Republican party right now,
as the party of Trump and
as the institutional vehicle
through which populism has
taken hold in this country,
the members of the Republican party
are unlikely to be constructive partners
in an endeavor to effect meaningful change
in revamping the
institutions and the service
of a more effective government.
That's not to say that there
aren't individual Republicans
who care deeply about
political dysfunction
and who would like to
do something about it.
So I'm not trying to cast a
poll on all Republicans at all,
but I think the kind of
structure of the Republican party
and to the extent that
populism has taken hold of it,
I would add it to the list of impediments
for a constructive change.
In the past, when we think about
major institutional reform,
it's often been bipartisan in nature.
Republicans and Democrats are like,
have gotten together and said
we need to do something about.
And there are some
opportunities for that now.
Actually again, I do think
these emergency power stuff
is one area in which you
could get some Republicans
to sign off on it.
And even more, if Biden becomes president.
But when you think about
kind of wholesale change
in trying to make for a
more effective government,
not necessarily a bigger government,
but a more effective one,
most of the action needs to
come from the Democratic party.
I think that's just being
politically realistic.
- So a few days ago, we
launched on use and series
out of the Center for Effective Government
with " The Washington
Post," "Monkey Cage" blog,
which outlined specific
reforms to Congress
and the presidency.
Can you speak a little bit about that,
'cause that seems so in the moment
and leading up to the election,
it's something that we wanted
to really get out in front of folks?
And I'm curious to hear from you, like,
which of those sort of
reforms resonate with you?
What are you thinking about
when we launched this?
- Yeah, so this has been a lot of both.
It's been both gratifying and
I think it's important work,
what we've partnered
with Protect Democracy,
which is an advocacy group
that has lots of lawyers
and they're spread it
all over the country.
They have assets that we don't have
here at the University of Chicago.
We have assets they don't have,
and it's an effort to
play a small part in,
again, trying to see
to a larger progressive movement
to talk about and to think
about institutional reform.
So we invited a bunch of
policy advocates and academics
and lawyers to write essays
that are being, as you said,
published on the "Monkey Cage" blog
on "The Washington Post" to
talk about a particular reform
or set of reforms that they think
would help improve government
when it comes to congressional
presidential relations.
And so we've had people
write about emergency powers,
congressional oversight a
presidential war making,
the development of expertise
within or the lack of
expertise within Congress.
And what kinds of institutional
reforms might improve that,
and changes to the legislature,
I mean, so there's a
big Supreme Court case
I initially chartered
from the early 1980s,
that got rid of the legislative veto,
which introduced all kinds
of additional pathologies.
And so there's, we've got a great essay
thinking about how we might revamp
a number of kind of governing regimes
between Congress and the president
in the aftermath of that ruling,
which we, as a country haven't
adequately attended to.
So it's a whole collection of things.
And Terry and I are writing as well
about agenda-setting powers.
So if I had to pick my favorite,
that's the one that's my favorite, right?
But look, this is about
bringing together people.
We've got Conservatives
and Democrats alike,
coming together, writing
about how to revamp Congress,
revamp the president and importantly,
revamp the relationship between the two.
So we can just have a better government.
So we're doing that, these
essays are coming out,
we're gonna try to bring them together
to talk about these things.
We've got plans afoot to gather
when we finally can gather in person
to try to think about and
to expand the audience
for these particular reforms.
Again, it's about trying to breathe life
into this reform movement.
- So I wanna end on a positive note.
What gives you hope as you
think about institutional reform
and where we're at in
this upcoming election,
and the hundreds of students
that are gonna virtually
walk through the halls
of the Keller Center this year?
- So when you talk about
institutional reform,
the first 60 to 90 seconds
is tough to get through,
but once you get past that
and you engage people,
particularly young people,
and I think there are
an awful lot of them,
who care deeply about this
country and its direction
and wanna make a difference.
They get that a whole lot is
at stake in this election.
And they get that the
institutions that they inherited
aren't working well.
And they're open to the
idea of thinking expansively
about change and about paving
a more productive way forward.
So I mean like where I come
away feeling energized,
I feel energized when
I engage with students,
I feel energized each time
after we have these meetings
with our friends at CLA, the
Civic Leadership Academy,
people who've devoted their
lives to this kind of work.
We're trying to amplify voices and ideas,
some of which are our own,
others of which come from other people,
in order to jumpstart a commitment
and a sustained commitment
to revitalizing our democracy.
Crises, there's a million
things to lament about crises,
and we have crises.
It's like a multidimensional set of crises
that have landed upon us,
but it also opens up opportunities.
And I think there are a lot of people
who want to take advantage
of their opportunities
to push forward and to be
in conversation with them,
and to engage them and
to be inspired by them,
there's nothing better.
- So we're just about wrapping up.
"Presidents, Populism and
the Crisis of Democracy,"
you can tell, I took notes.
You can find this at your
local independent bookstore.
If you're in Hyde Park, we
recommend the Seminary Co-op.
We have a CLA fellow
from the Seminary Co-op
and Professor Howell
serves on their board.
- It is the best bookstore in the country.
It's just fantastic.
Support the Seminary Co-op.
- There you go, down willows,
but really, the last question
too, Professor Austin Ryan,
who via Twitter asked
you a question yesterday,
"You actually love Taco Bell this much?"
- I actually do.
I love everything on the Taco Bell menu,
and anybody who wants to go to Taco Bell,
there's one opening on 53rd,
and I just learned that
it's not just a Taco Bell,
it's a cantina.
I mean, I think if we
can order beer there,
it's unbelievable.
And I would happen at any time,
happily walk into a Taco Bell
and have three random items
picked for me and served,
I would absolutely delight,
eating whatever it is.
- I feel like this is a bit of challenge
you're putting forth to
our incoming students.
- We shall dine together.
- I recommend they all take you up on it.
If you'd all like to follow our work
with the Center for Effective Government,
we've got a website
effectivegov.uchicago.edu.
You can follow Howell on
Twitter @ProfWillHowell.
And I think Anna's dropping
a couple other links
in the chat.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Howell, it was such a pleasure
to chat with you as always.
- It's great to talk to you too, Sadia.
This is work that we do together,
and I think we're both
doing our best to try
and amplify these things.
It's such an honor and
pleasure to work with you.
- Thank you, and to everyone listening in,
thank you and good night.
This is great.
