THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, December 2, 2020 |A
A Big-Thinking
Executive
Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of
Democracy
By William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe
(Chicago, 269 pages, $18)BOOKSHELF| By Philip Wallach
I
t’s a curious irony. Those who have constantly warned of
Donald Trump’s authoritarian menace are naturally
attracted to proposals that limit executive power and
revitalize the separation of powers. Yet when those same
observers envision a Biden-Harris administration stuck with
a Republican-controlled Senate, they yearn for a presidency
with far more power, not less. William Howell and Terry Moe,
professors of political science atthe University of Chicago and
Stanford respectively, appear to solve this paradox in “Presi-
dents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy.” Mr. Trump’s
brand of populism, they argue, presents an existential threat
to American democracy, and there is every reason to expect
imitators after Mr. Trump leaves the stage. But this populism
thrives only because America’s
government is so woefully
ineffective at dealing with the
serious challenges of modern
life. Our best chance to make it
more effective, in their view, is
to build up the big-thinking
presidency at the expense of a
myopic and parochial Congress.
As in their previous book,
“Relic: How Our Constitution
Undermines Effective Govern-
ment and Why We Need a More
Powerful Presidency” (2016),
the authors position themselves
as heirs to Progressive Era
reformers who championed
effective government. They are
unashamed Wilsonians, sharing
with the scholar-turned-president the conviction that, as the
only federal official elected by the whole nation, the president
is the only reliable champion of the common good in our
national government. Elected representatives, in that view, are
hopelessly beholden to the special interests of their districts.
Since this characteristic flows naturally from their place in our
Constitutional design, it cannot be cured by anything as simple
as overcoming polarization or getting money out of politics.
We should regard our antique Constitution as an obstacle
to good governance, not an object of reverence, they assert.
If we are unlikely to replace it entirely, we can nevertheless
rebalance it by means of an amendment that empowers presi-
dents to propose legislation, which would then have to receive
a quick up-or-down vote from Congress. This “universal fast-
track authority” would give presidents the chance to match
the legislative agenda to the pressing needs of society. Presi-
dents so empowered would have clear accountability and
would therefore handle the many problems of modernity our
current system has neglected. The populist threat would ebb.
Messrs. Howell and Moe write with clarity and verve. “In
today’s political ecosystem,” they write in one typical aside,
“libertarians have all the relevance of the dodo bird and
Steller’s sea cow.” And it is hard to object to their overarching
goals of institutionally reforming our dysfunctional politics
and improving the quality of our governance.
But the book’s central argument depends on a sleight of
hand regarding the nature of populism. Populism arises, they
say, because of a political system’s genuine failings, especially
in response to “globalization, technological change, and
immigration, which unleashed profound socioeconomic
disruptions of jobs, economic security, and the traditional
culture of the white working class.” But while populists are
right to point out these problems, they are uninterested in
solutions. Since their success depends on stoking resentments,
they are perfectly happy to see government flail, or to go along
with “orthodox Republican” opposition to useful programs.The populists’ “antisystem” tendencies, Messrs. Howell and
Moe conclude, make them dangerous. But the authors give a
pass to other politicians who rail against moneyed interests
and a sellout political class—Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders.
Since these politicians present “well-defined policy platforms
aimed at solving social problems,” they’re OK.
Messrs. Howell and Moe try to avoid the charge of using a
double standard by listing tactics employed by populist
demagogues: “emotional oratory,” “promising the impossible,”
“folksy posturing,” “gross oversimplification.” These sound like
ordinary politics. One wonders what they make of Joe Biden’s
promise to cure cancer, or to banish Covid-19 simply by
“listening to the scientific experts.”
The authors seem to think it’s obvious what problems our
federal government should solve, but the truth is that much of
our political conflict is over which problems deserve govern-
ment’s attention. The rancorous protests of 2020 suggested
that police abuse and systemic racism are the most pressing
problems for some, but neither appears anywhere in the book.
What Messrs. Howell and Moe appear to want is a basically
populist policy agenda carried out by Democrats. That may be
good political strategy, but it is anything but uncontroversial
on the left, where many hope that “deplorables” get their
comeuppance rather than government solicitude.
One could read Messrs. Howell and Moe’s book as an
attempt to bolster the technocratic camp in ongoing intra-
party struggles among Democrats. That would help explain
why they cartoonishly paint the GOP as the “organized means
by which populism in America finds expression and exercises
power” and Democrats as would-be saviors concerned with
the national good. But perhaps they are genuinely oblivious
to the ways in which their own argument partakes of the very
antisystem impulse they vehemently denounce in populists.
“Parochial,” for them, is a dirty word; all interests are
dismissed as “special” when compared to the good work of
solving big problems with big new programs. They stop
short of branding defenders of our current system as
enemies of thepeople, but they are headed in that direction.
The authors seem ready to reject the venerable American
tradition of pluralism—an increasingly common move for
those on the left who question their opponents’ legitimacy.
They are sure the country made it through the 20th century’s
fiercest challenges mainly because it had dynamic presidents.
All that business about deliberation and self-government, they
think, is mere sentimentalism—and one suspects they’ll soon
use much stronger language in denouncing the Senate. Call me
a sentimentalist, but I’ll stick with our rickety old Constitution.Mr. Wallach is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute.The U.S. Constitution, a pair of political
scientists contend, is not a document to be
revered but an obstacle to good governance.Liberty’s Last Line of Defense
N
ew administrations of
both parties have a ten-
dency to try to accom-
plish their policy goals by ex-
ecutive decree. As the rush of
a campaign meets the reality
of governing, incoming presi-
dents and staffers grow frus-
trated with the messy details
of bicameralism and present-
ment—sign-off from both
chambers and the president—
required to enact new laws.
Having served in the Senate, I
can understand the frustra-
tion.
But who is there to protect
and defend the rule of law
from an overeager new admin-
istration? State attorneys gen-
eral, who are the last line of
defense against federal over-
reach.
I served as Alabama’s attor-
ney general. I’ve witnessed
the power of state attorneys
general when they unite to de-
fend the Constitution and rule
of law against edicts from ex-
ecutive-branch officials and fi-
ats of unelected bureaucrats.
State attorneys general have
pushed back on the federal
government’s clear over-
reaches in the Affordable Care
Act’s contraceptive mandate,the Clean Power Plan, and the
Waters of the United States
rule when they threatened
Americans’ liberties.
Attorneys general fall down
in this duty when they prac-
tice partisanship—as did
those who participated in thepast four years of the “resis-
tance.” These attorneys gen-
eral rushed to court as a
means to issue press releases
or make political appearances
in the media against their par-
tisan opponents or in support
of their political agendas. At-
torneys general serve the na-
tion best by making meritori-
ous arguments grounded in
the law.
When I served as Alabama’s
attorney general and then as
chairman of the Republican
Attorneys General Association,
the mandate was simple: Look
to the Constitution, the law as
written and the precedent.
That is the attorney general’s
role—to make sure the law is
followed, not craft his own.
Most every state now
boasts an office of solicitor
general, stocked with top-
flight lawyers who choose to
serve in their state capitals,
making arguments in federalcourts to defend the rights of
the states and their citizens.
Over the course of the past
four years, President Trump
appointed 28 of these solici-
tors general and other high-
level staff to the federal bench
at the district and circuit lev-
els. Thirteen alumni of state
attorney-general offices were
on the president’s Supreme
Court list.
As the new administration
takes shape over the coming
weeks and as a new crop of
officials try their hand run-
ning the behemoth that is the
federal government, state at-
torneys general will be watch-
ing. They stand poised to act
as the defenders of the rule of
law on behalf of their constit-
uents.Mr. Strange, a Republican,
served as Alabama’s attorney
general (2011-17) and a U.S.
senator (2017-18).By Luther Strange
State attorneys
general best serve
when they eschew
partisanship.OPINION
As the 116th
Congress en-
ters its final
weeks, I have
a suggestion
for House and
Senate lead-
ers: Take a
break from
nonstop poli-
tics and focus
on the needs
of the country. On Tuesday a
bipartisan and bicameral
group of legislators proposed
a $908 billion emergency
Covid relief package to get the
American people through a
difficult winter. Leadership
should take up this bill
immediately.
Thanks to the accelerated
development of safe and ef-
fective vaccines, for which the
Trump administration de-
serves substantial credit,
there is reason to hope that
the economy and society will
have moved substantially to-
ward normal by next summer.
The task right now is to help
as many Americans as possi-
ble navigate the intervening
months with their lives and
livelihoods intact.
In the early weeks of the
pandemic, Congress came to-
gether to pass the Cares Act,
which provided vital assis-
tance to unemployed Ameri-
cans, small businesses and
state and local institutions.
Without this legislation, many
millions would have been left
destitute and entire catego-
ries of businesses would have
been decimated.
Unfortunately, many im-
portant provisions of this law
will lapse at the end of the
A Christmas Compromise on Covid Relief?
year, and negotiations among
the White House and leaders
in the Senate and House have
stalled. Meanwhile, more
than 10 million Americans
soon face the loss of unem-
ployment benefits and health
insurance. Millions of others
face the threat of eviction
from their homes in the new
year. Some 26 million Ameri-
cans reported not having
enough to eat during the past
week. In cities across the na-
tion, lines stretch at food
banks struggling to find the
resources and volunteers to
meet the demand.
Without further assis-
tance, tens of thousands of
small businesses will soon be
forced to close their doors
for good. Schools will be un-
able to reopen because they
lack tests, protective equip-
ment and updated ventilation
systems. Hospitals face
shortages of beds, equipment
and trained staff, even as
they absorb billions of dol-
lars in uncompensated care.
With case spiking yet again,
patients could soon be dying
in hospital corridors, as they
did in the spring. In the af-
termath of the Thanksgiving
and Christmas holiday, the
situation could turn even
worse.
State and local govern-
ments faced revenue losses of
at least $70 billion in fiscal
2020, rising to an estimated
$268 billion in 2021 and $
billion in 2022, according to a
recent report in this newspa-
per. As revenues plummet,
these jurisdictions have been
forced to spend tens of bil-
lions of dollars to deal withthe health crisis. Because most
are prohibited from running
deficits, they have responded
the only way they can—by
drawing down reserves and
cutting services, including po-
lice, firefighters and other
first responders as well as
transportation and social ser-
vices. Over the past year, state
and local employment has de-
clined by 1.2 million.Even with widespread pub-
lic cooperation, vaccinating a
critical mass of Americans
will take months. Meanwhile,
there is much to do that could
mitigate the effects of the cri-
sis. Elected officials can build
a financial bridge to a post-
pandemic world and help tens
of millions of Americans keep
food on the table, a roof over
their heads, their businesses
in operation, and essential
services functioning until the
middle of 2021, when mass
distribution of vaccines will
finally begin to end this
scourge.
None of this is—or should
be—controversial. Elected of-
ficials came together across
party lines to do all these
things less than nine months
ago. Yes, it cost an eye-pop-
ping amount of money. But
most Americans believe it was
worth it. According to a re-
cent survey, 74% of Ameri-cans, including 56% of Repub-
licans, want Washington to do
more.
They’re right. Government
exists to do what individuals,
voluntary associations, and
markets cannot, and to assist
state and localities in such ex-
tenuating circumstances. As in
war, the scope and duration of
government’s emergency re-
sponse should be driven by
the facts on the ground, not
politically driven timetables
and spending limits.
The outlines of a bipartisan
compromise have been clear
for months. On Tuesday the
House Problem Solvers Cau-
cus and a bipartisan group of
senators came together to
propose a four-month emer-
gency package. Much of the
bill’s $908 billion is repur-
posed from the Cares Act. The
bill provides substantial allo-
cations for unemployment in-
surance, small business, states
and localities, health care,
vaccine distribution, educa-
tion and transportation.
If House and Senate leader-
ship won’t bring this bill to
the floor, the bipartisan group
of legislators should use exist-
ing procedures to force a
vote, either as a free-standing
bill or as an amendment to
legislation such as the con-
tinuing resolution to fund the
government. And they should
make it clear that they will
vote against adjourning until
relief has been passed. To
leave Washington without ac-
tion on a Covid-19 package
would be a dereliction of duty
and, as Virginia Sen. Mark
Warner put it on Tuesday,
“stupidity on steroids.”Americans need help
only government can
provide to weather
the next few months.POLITICS
& IDEAS
By William
A. Galston
A curious
email arrived
after Satur-
day’s col-
umn, from a
state official
overseeing
medical care
for millions
of Medicaid
beneficia-
ries, includ-
ing nursing-home inmates, in
a state whose nursing-home
deaths from Covid-19 are
nothing to brag about.
I will withhold his name,
but he said my column was
“ill-informed,” “inaccurate”
and “unscientific rubbish”
without stating any claim that
he was disagreeing with.
He suggested I had gotten
my information from Steve
Bannon and Ben Carson,
though I mentioned neither
man. Apparently because I
cited a Senate hearing on
treating early-stage Covid
with a variety of drugs includ-
ing hydroxychloroquine, he
wrote: “I suggest if infected
you pledge to stay home, take
hydroxychloroquine, and not
go to the hospital for more in-
tensive treatment.”
This person is a medical
doctor. I asked if he told sta-
tin users they should refuse
treatment if they went on to
develop severe coronary dis-
ease. No response, though he
did acknowledge a list of
sources I provided for every
statement in my column.
I mention him because
what rang through his email
was histrionic, unreasoning
denial of a highly representa-
tive sort. In reality, my col-
umn was a statement of the
obvious, you might even say
We Decide How Much Covid
the culpably obvious. When a
disease spreads more easily
than the flu, by people with
few or no symptoms, it will be
“extremely difficult” to con-
tain, to use the recent admis-
sion of Anthony Fauci.
Our testing will be lucky to
catch one case in 10, to use
the estimate of CDC’s Robert
Redfield during the summer
surge.
It was always going to fall
to 330 million Americans, as
it clearly has, to heed advice
and do the best they can to
limit the damage of a virus
that can’t be controlled by of-
ficials exercising their elected
powers.The fault for delaying and
burying this message lies not
only with President Trump
saying the virus was “under
control,” New York Mayor Bill
de Blasio saying, “We’ve got a
long time to ramp up,” or Cal-
ifornia Gov. Gavin Newsom
saying the “protocols have
been perfected” (whatever
that was supposed to mean).
Even today, every media in-
stitution, university and the
Covid Tracking Project, with
their obsessive focus on con-
firmed (i.e., visible) cases,
give the public the wrong idea
about a disease that is wide-
spread and invisible.
In its great deconstruction
of the fiasco in Bergamo, Italy,
the New York Times on Mon-day pointed to the foolish
early guidance given to doc-
tors: When confronted with
unexplained pneumonia, don’t
check for Covid unless the vic-
tim can be positively linked to
China. It’s hard to imagine
more terrible advice,
as if the goal were
protecting our-
selves from the
knowledge of any
spread not linked
to China. Yet this
was the U.S. ap-
proach as well.
Most people
with flu-like symp-
toms never see a
doctor. We should have con-
sidered the virus rampant in
the U.S. even before any cases
had been identified. When I
pointed all this out in late
January, I was channeling
what any epidemiologist
would have told you the day
before Covid happened. The
only mystery is why we de-
cided to forget everything we
knew about the flu-like pan-
demic we had spent decades
preparing for.
For one thing, the “long,
dark winter” everybody talks
about can still be lighter and
shorter. Individuals can stop
transmitting the disease if
they choose to. The truth is,
most of our activities don’t
require crowding together
and breathing in each other’s
mouths and nostrils or show-
ering each other in spittle.
It’s not impossible to avoid
Covid even if people around
you have it. Even workers
with public-facing jobs have
shown they can do it. And the
incentives become stronger
with a vaccine a few weeks or
months away, which meansthe costs and inconveniences
won’t have to be borne much
longer.
It’s bracing to consider that
if deaths today were 100,
instead of 250,000, our ran-
corous politics and media
would not reflect that we
had just saved 150,
lives. There was never
going to be a good
outcome from Covid,
but any situation can
be improved. The
time-honored prophy-
lactic for panic is ac-
tionable information. Un-
fortunately, in their own
panic, our officials encouraged
the first surge by suggesting
they could control the disease,
then tried to redress their er-
ror with unsustainable lock-
downs. We’ve been on the
seesaw ever since.
A realistic assessment of
the U.S. role in the 2008
global financial panic never
came; instead we got a silly
government report that said
bad things happened because
officials didn’t prevent them.
I fear the same will happen
with Covid-19. The angry deni-
alism of my email friend from
an undisclosed state medical
agency shows why. Our big-
gest failure can’t be discussed.
It consisted of not leveling
with the American people
sooner, about a risk they
would have no choice but to
manage without government
wand-waving to make it all
OK.
By the way, I withhold my
correspondent’s name on the
assumption that he is not the
idiot his email, or his subse-
quent legal threats, indicate.
For the sake of his state, I
hope I am not wrong.The U.S. promoted
the illusion of control
instead of the wisdom
of risk management.BUSINESS
WORLD
By Holman W.
Jenkins, Jr.
AL DRAGO/
BLOOMBERG