I spent my career as a city planner working for the local governments of three great American cities, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and San Francisco. In those 40 years, I saw firsthand a steady growth in cynicism toward government at all levels. That cynicism has created the path toward the ineffectual central government we currently have, at a time when we need it the most.
To be sure, the basis of our skepticism of centralized government has been with us since the beginning. Jefferson’s ideals of states’ rights and a decentralized government grew from his fear of tyranny: “I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.” And so, compared to most other countries, the US has evolved into an “anti-public” society that values individual aspirations over collective goals. Our attitude toward health care is a case in point — millions have lost their health insurance during a pandemic (!) because we are left on our own rather than a publicly sponsored system that all other industrialize countries provide.
Our cities reflect these values. Cities are our most important physical manifestations of our beliefs, or lack thereof, in shared values. The consequence of these anti-public, or what one might call anti-civic, beliefs during the last century was that many of our deteriorating cities were shrugged off by the Federal government and the nation. Local governments and communities were left on our own to address the decline.
We seem to forget that earlier in the last century, we suspended our mistrust of central government and rallied to succeed in two world wars and economic recovery from the Great Depression. And the last century thereby became known as the “American Century”.
That suspension of mistrust did not last. The nation’s more recent disillusion with government began with the war in Vietnam and was made especially acute with Watergate. With Vietnam, we questioned our leaders’ decisions. With Watergate we questioned their integrity. For good reason, in both cases.
But American’s mistrust of government then went much further. It was deliberately inflamed during the Reagan administration, with the attitude of the president himself that he was presiding over an entity that was inept and was actually harmful to Americans. Remember his quote: “Government IS the problem”. This begat the notion that the federal government was too big, took too much of our money, and controlled too much of our lives. And these beliefs have permeated federal policy through both parties since: Reagan’s tax cuts, Bill Clinton’s dismantling of the welfare system and Barack Obama’s lack of interest in taking action against banks who helped create the Great Recession.
Donald Trump’s election is Americans’ latest and most destructive manifestation that “Government is the problem”. Millions voted for a businessman with no public sector experience, who actually hates government. To wit, he and his cabinet have been systematically dismantling the Federal government with their actions and bashing government with their words.
Trump has also embraced an unwritten policy begun post-Watergate: our replacement for a strong government is big business. We now rely on private corporations to bail us out. We have become so enamored of the notion that private corporations know better, that this has become a truism in America and we barely question the actual policies that result. Those policies, from tax breaks to oil companies, to tax cuts to the wealthy, to “public-private partnerships” to build infrastructure, all provide public subsidy to enhance private sector profits. With respect to housing, for example, Federal and state governments have largely abdicated their role in providing for low income populations. So the solution for many cities is to require private developers to do so. But even in San Francisco, with astronomical housing prices, the affordable housing that developers can feasibly provide is less than 20% of the actual need.
Trump’s reluctance to fully invoke the Defense Production Act is another example. His premise is that private industry will come to the rescue.
But have they? If private business can address public needs, why has economic inequality been worsening for decades? Why are cities, forced to rely on the private market for housing, faced with growing demands for affordable housing? Why are we unable to provide safety equipment for health care workers during a pandemic?
The notion that private business can replace government has failed, dismally, and we are now paying the price with our lives. This is not a failure of business but a result of our lack of confidence in government. For a brilliant overview of this failure, see Anand Ghiradaradas’s book: “Winners Take All, the Elite Charade of Changing the World”.
The purpose of a private corporation is not to provide public services, it is to make a profit. Fine. Private industry has and can support a public mission, but only within the arms of a powerful, focused and publicly-minded federal government. No company has the wherewithal of the federal government in scope and resources. More importantly, no private company has a mission to support public needs. The current uproar over the Federal government’s chaotic response to the virus suggests support for this notion of a strong public sector to provide for our needs.
We have an opportune moment for a return to a more constructive paradigm. I do not propose to undo our American DNA that instills governmental skepticism. I only hope we can return to the realization, embraced 100 years ago, that strong government is the solution, not the problem. The crises of two world wars and a depression rallied Americans to support their government. The current crisis is doing the opposite.
John Rahaim is a city planner, urbanist and public sector advocate. He was most recently the Planning Director of San Francisco, for 12 years.
