At the heart of America’s current dysfunction is a founding tension we’ve never resolved: the Hamiltonian drive to empower a centralized state to build big things versus the Jeffersonian impulse to distrust concentrated power and protect individual liberty. Author Mark Dunkelman argues that when the country has been at its best, it lived in the middle of these dueling impulses, but today we are catastrophically stuck. We expect government to solve massive problems—from climate change to housing—yet we’ve systematically stripped it of the power and discretion to act effectively, creating a system where everyone has a voice but anyone can wield a veto.

The conversation traces this shift through a history of over-correction. In the mid-20th century, figures like Robert Moses wielded immense, centralized power to build infrastructure, but often ran roughshod over communities, as dramatized in the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway. In a necessary and righteous reaction, progressives of the 60s and 70s erected a vast scaffolding of protections: environmental reviews, community input requirements, historic preservation mandates, and new rights to sue. The intention was to prevent future abuses of power, but the unintended consequence was to make ambitious public projects nearly impossible to execute.

The result is a stark contrast between what government once achieved and what it can do now. Dunkelman points to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) of the 1930s, which rapidly electrified an entire impoverished region the size of England, as an example of effective, large-scale action. Today, an analogous project—like building a national clean energy grid or a high-speed rail line—is mired in endless objections and litigation. A poignant modern example is the Biden administration’s 2021 plan to build a national network of EV chargers; three years and $7.5 billion later, only a handful have been opened due to a maze of state-level procedures, siting issues, and utility negotiations.

Dunkelman, himself a progressive, insists the left must engage in self-criticism. While conservative efforts to sabotage government are real, progressives have created a system that prioritizes perfect, universally agreed-upon processes over actual results. The path forward, he suggests, isn’t a return to Moses-style authoritarianism, but designing a new balance: creating systems where everyone has a voice, but no single entity has a veto, and where public servants are empowered with the discretion to make tough trade-offs in the public interest. Rebuilding trust, he contends, will start not with grand promises, but with government demonstrably doing small things well, proving it can be a competent tool for collective problem-solving.

Surprising Insights

• The extreme inefficiency of well-funded programs: Despite a $7.5 billion investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021 to build a national network of EV chargers, only about 58 chargers were opened in the following three years, illustrating how procedural maze can completely strangle even popular, well-funded initiatives.
• Progressives as accidental architects of gridlock: The very reforms progressives championed in the 60s and 70s to curb authoritarian power—environmental reviews, community input mandates, expanded rights to sue—have evolved into the primary machinery of obstruction that now prevents progressive goals like green energy and affordable housing.
• The transformation of a simple review into a weapon: The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), passed in 1970, was initially envisioned as a modest requirement for engineers to consider alternatives. Through litigation and judicial interpretation, it has morphed into a process where impact statements run to thousands of pages, primarily as a defensive measure against lawsuits rather than a genuine environmental tool.
• The pendulum swing of institutional trust: In the early 1960s, about 80% of Americans trusted the federal government to do what is right. By 2022, that figure had collapsed to around 20%, a decline that underscores the deep crisis of legitimacy that makes collective action so difficult.

Practical Takeaways

• Design for “voice, not veto”: When advocating for new projects or reforms, push for processes that incorporate community feedback and rigorous review, but establish clear decision points after which objections cannot endlessly delay construction. The goal is to hear all concerns without granting any single group the power to permanently halt a project deemed to be in the broader public interest.
• Streamline and sunset procedural requirements: Support reforms to laws like NEPA that would set reasonable page limits for environmental impact statements and enforce strict timelines for review completion. Consider “sunset” provisions for certain approval layers once broad criteria are met.
• Empower public servants with discretion: Advocate for reforms that allow career civil servants and project managers more authority to weigh trade-offs and make decisions, moving them from a mentality of purely risk-averse box-ticking to one of accountable problem-solving. This includes re-examining the thicket of rules that make public service a frustrating exercise in process rather than outcomes.
• Start with demonstrative, small-scale wins: To rebuild public trust, prioritize getting government to perform its basic functions efficiently and visibly—filling potholes, processing permits quickly, running clean and safe public facilities. Success in small, tangible areas can build the political capital needed for larger projects.