Mailbag: Biden’s indecisive lawfare

Plus kids and phones, economic growth, and the role of an informed public

Before we get to today’s post, a few readers let us know via email and in comments that they’d be interested in organizing a local reader meet-up, but weren’t sure if enough Slow Boring readers lived nearby to make it worth their time. So, if you’d be interested in attending an event in one of these cities, please let us know below!

Beyond that, I want to acknowledge that this has been a wild week in the American government, with Trump announcing (and to some extent rescinding) a range of chaotic and, at times, lawless executive orders. I don’t think it’s really Slow Boring’s comparative advantage to try to do play-by-play coverage of this sort of thing (follow me on Twitter or Blue Sky if you want something closer to that), but I’m not ignoring it either. We’re just trying to focus here on more analytic takes that unfold a little bit more slowly.

The first batch of questions this week is from people who hit our incentive threshold for the GiveDirectly fundraiser back in November. Jealous? Participate next time — it’s a great cause!

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Julian J: I’m an American living abroad, and I have a new partner who hasn’t spent a lot of time in the US but will hopefully visit with me before long. I have plenty of ideas about what to do, and of course it depends on her preferences, but what would you recommend (on the margin, i.e. your thoughts relative to the TripAdvisor / ChatGPT consensus) in terms of places / activities that are less well-known or under-appreciated or simply uniquely American?

This is a really fascinating question. As an American, I don’t really think that much about visiting America. I end up traveling a fair amount to visit family or for various work things, so I tend to have more of a philosophy of “look up what happens to be in a given place” rather than “deliberately seek out the best places to visit.”

But the duality of the USA is that while New York is a tremendous global city full of great stuff to do, it’s also not very “American” (I say this as a native New Yorker) in terms of expressing what’s unique about the country. I think one big question is does she have any interest in visiting something like Disneyworld (I am not a fan) or Las Vegas (I think it’s kind of great) that really represents the pure postmodern schlocky exuberance of American culture. These places are kind of amazing, but also not for everyone. At the other end of the spectrum, but also very distinctively American in its own way, I’m a big fan of rural New England in general and coastal Maine in particular. But in terms of what may or may not be underrated, I guess I would say that for all its problems, Chicago is a real gem of a city to visit. This article and this followup earned me a bit of a reputation as a Chicago hater, but I am sincerely not a Chicago hater. I think Chicago is really great, which is why I bother to worry about it.

As a tourist, though, none of the long-term economic or governance problems facing the city are especially relevant. It’s a place you can visit that has first-rate museums, incredible food at both the high-end and the “cheap eats” pole, and a lot of really cool architecture downtown but also interesting residential neighborhoods. It also has midwestern vibes that I think make it sort of “more American” than New York or Los Angeles, and it has more history to explore than the giant sunbelt cities with warmer weather or a more favorable tax situation. It’s also more affordable than the other big American cities, so you can get a nicer hotel or Airbnb. Just make sure to visit some time when the weather is nice and you’ll wonder why people aren’t constantly moving to Chicago. I wouldn’t say I particularly have any deep insights into hidden gems — the stuff that people say is good (the architectural boat tour, the Art Institute, the famous restaurants, the Field Museum) is, in fact, good.

Jesse D: Why didn't Georgia and federal prosecutors move faster and with more focus to prosecute Trump for election interference and mishandling classified documents? Given that he was probably going to run again, it seems obvious that he should've been tried quickly, for many reasons: to bring information to light before the next election, and to preempt the protections he’d get once he was the nominee/president-elect. Instead, Merrick Garland took 2 years to name a special prosecutor, and Fani Willis in Georgia made a sprawling case with 19 defendants. Why didn't they treat Trump as an urgent threat who might re-offend if not brought quickly to justice?

I can’t really speak to the state cases, but with regard to Merrick Garland’s decision-making, I think the simplest account here is that it’s a standard Biden-era case of failing to be decisive and make clear calls.

From the standpoint of January 20, 2021, there was a reasonable case for going hard and fast at Trump with every tool available. And there was also a reasonable case for high-mindedly eschewing lawfare in favor of focusing on normal governance. Either option featured both upsides and downsides. It’s not obvious to me which would have been better, and whichever one Biden chose, the people who favored the other one would invariably have made unfalsifiable assertions that he made the wrong choice. So Biden did the Biden thing and split the difference. He did go after Trump legally, but he also bent over backward at every step to depoliticize the prosecutions and investigations, even at the cost of massively slowing them down. This didn’t really make any sense as a strategy qua strategy, but it made a fair amount of sense as a strategy for keeping his entire coalition at a low grumbling simmer rather than making anyone upset.

Of course, with Biden, all recriminations now lead back to his age. But my understanding from people who worked with him 10-20 years ago is that he’s been at his best as a legislative dealmaker and conciliator and at his worst as a guy who is asked to make hard choices in a decisive way.

Mike W: What is the role of a well-informed populace in politics? You've spoken approvingly of secret congress in the past, but at the same time you're in the business of informing people. Would the world be a better place if everyone stopped watching cable news? Are there specific issues you've decided not to write about because you think more public information would actually hurt?

Information is good! If everyone knew basic facts like the relative scale of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid compared to all other domestic spending, that would be great. If every single person involved in progressive politics (as a donor, as a volunteer, as a poster, as a staffer, as an activist) just knew “whatever else you may think, having an image as politically moderate helps win elections,” that would be an incredible step forward. Facts are good. Information is good.

What I don’t think is great is when people need to negotiate in public.

To make a deal, you need to do some wheeling and dealing. You need to convey to your counterparty that some of the stuff you asked for isn’t actually that important to you. You need to convey to your counterparty that even if you agree with him substantively about X, it’s just not going to work as a deal if you give ground there. You need to convey to your counterparty that you’ll never admit it publicly, but you privately do agree with him about Y, so let’s make sure to put it in as long as he is willing to take the blame. You’re making deals. What you want to do is reach a deal that everyone agrees is better than the status quo, and then step out from the shadows and have each individual party to the deal explain why she thinks the deal is good, all things considered. This is just very hard to do if it’s all supposed to happen live on television. And I do think that the development of a fully nationalized media that puts an intensive glare on Congress can often be counterproductive to the art of actual legislating.

I’m not really in the scoops business, so it’s not like I get scoops that I then sit on because I think attention would be counterproductive. But I am interested in drawing attention to the details of Republicans negotiating a budget reconciliation package because I am hostile to their basic goals. I think they are more likely to succeed to the extent they can work this all out in private and let everyone pay attention to the Trump Show, and I think that would be bad.

Darshan S: I recently read about the Trump administration's 3% GDP target goal. Casting aside if this is the right number, or if his other declared policies are counterproductive, it's interesting to see economic growth as a headline metric.

Is it me, or do Democrats rarely mention economic growth as a focal point? And if the Dems did have a “3% GDP growth” policy, what would it include that also captures the other values Dems care about? Because despite economic success under Democratic administrations, the public thinks the economy is less of a Democratic priority than a Republican one.

I think setting growth targets is deeply silly, but yes, I think Democrats should care more about economic growth and say more clearly that they care. There’s a reason that this was point one of the Common Sense Manifesto!

Anonymous: Are you familiar with the work of Keith Humphreys and others regarding drug policy? Or policies that are being enacted like the ones in this thread? How would you think about trying to design urban drug policy?

I like Keith Humphreys a lot. We’ve published two pieces by Keith Humphreys at Slow Boring, and I was on a panel with him a couple of months ago. I cannot speak to the specifics of Dorsey’s Prop 36, but I recommend Humphreys’ December 4 report for Brookings on “The rise and fall of Pacific Northwest drug policy reform, 2020-2024.” My broad understanding is that the newly elected Lurie administration in San Francisco is attempting to course-correct away from what he’s criticizing there.

To be on my bullshit for a minute, one point that strikes me as worth elevating is that “don’t have drug addicts making your parks and public transit unpleasant” is itself a legitimate policy goal.

Drug policy should try to an extent to serve the policy goals of helping people struggling with addiction. Pursuing harm reduction rather than being purely punitive is smart and makes sense. A lot of what has been done in the name of harm reduction over the past five years, though, has failed to actually reduce harm by (to cite Humphreys again) going too far in the name of reducing stigmatization. Stigmatizing people suffering from addiction does cause some harm, but it also reduces a lot of harm by discouraging people from becoming addicted to drugs. But beyond that framework, punitive measures can be justified in terms of their benefits to people who are not drug users. Public spaces need to be managed in ways that are broadly beneficial to the public writ large.

Greg S: How should historical research get funded? Does the current model of bundling research together with teaching history to undergraduates still make sense? How is this sustainable with the plummeting number of history majors? What are alternative models? Writing for a general audience with a Substack? Philanthropy?

I don’t have a full-fledged opinion on this beyond the observation that the declining number of history majors seems to me to be largely driven by a mismatch between what kinds of history people are interested in learning about and what kinds of topics academic historians have decided are interesting.

In particular, there is just very clearly enduring interest in military history and a certain kind of core political history that have become unfashionable in academia. Whether you’re looking at what nonfiction books sell, what podcasts are popular, or what Substacks people read, there is clearly an audience for telling people about presidents and monarchs and old wars. My understanding is that the fall of this kind of history in academia is, in part, related to ideological and political conflicts. But it’s broader than that. Mike Duncan, who is quite left-wing, found a huge audience with his Revolutions podcast by speaking in a compelling and modern way about very traditional political history topics. And I think that universities ought to take more seriously the idea that education is a service and they need to try to provide the kind of classes that people are interested in.

Eric G: You’ve engaged with Jonathan Haidt’s hypothesis on the harms of the decline in play-based childhood and the impact of social media and smartphones on kids. Do you see any potential solutions—either from your own experience as a parent or through the lens of public policy?

While ideas like “convince other parents to read Haidt” or “form a like-minded community in one ‘village’” seem impractical, it’s unclear what role government could play here, aside from extreme measures like banning smartphones for kids and hoping play-based childhood naturally follows. What do you think might work?

I think there are a lot of interrelated things here, and to an extent, just repeating the message that it’s good for kids to spend more time interacting with each other and less time home alone surfing social media is important to creating change at the margin.

A few scattered specific points on this:

• I kind of hate the concept of “screen time.” I think there are meaningful differences between kids sitting on the couch together playing Mario Kart, kids each sitting at home online gaming with their friends, and kids sitting at home interacting with strangers on the internet.

• Norms matter. It’s hard to be the strictest parent in your community. So just plain position-taking and thought-leadership from public officials makes a difference, with or without policy.

• Schools banning smartphones is good both for creating a more distraction-free in-school environment and also because it helps de-normalize the idea that young kids need smartphones at all.

• There are lots of interesting products out there that there that are loosely in the spirit of “what if I could give my kid an old-fashioned non-smart phone.” But I specifically wish Apple would make a product like this, because Apple is so good at marketing a holistic ecosystem. A device for kids that makes calls and texts and has access to Music and Maps but no App Store or social media could be great.

• Safe streets matter! I think non-parents don’t spend enough time wrestling with the reality that the explosion of trucks and SUVs has made walking and biking much more dangerous for kids.

• High-pressure youth sports is bad and discourages basic old-fashioned hanging out.

lindamc: Some neighborhoods in DC (bougie ones in upper NW) promote the idea of “naturally occurring retirement communities,” in which older people stay in their (generally large single-family) houses, even as they need increasing assistance to deal with day-to-day life tasks. Obviously in a constrained housing market, it is unfortunate that people in this situation are essentially overconsuming housing relative to their needs. Is it per se bad, though?

My reflexive thought is that it is, but that might be because so much of my experience with people in this situation is in the context of their NIMBYing away stuff I want (like better zoning, more apartments in the neighborhood, and bike lanes on Connecticut Ave), so I'm just generally annoyed by them. I also see a lot of people who seem unequal to the task of keeping up with a big house and yard (I am well into middle age myself so I have seen unfortunate examples of the problems with this in my own family).

Do you have a take on this?

I’m not, like, “against” this, but I mostly think it’s a turn of phrase that is used to rationalize policies that are actually bad.