Mailbag: Parenting and politics

Plus Cambridge zoning reform and the politics of elite universities

We have some upcoming Slow Boring meet-ups you may be interested in joining: Readers have organized events in Chicago on April 10 (in partnership with A City That Works, a like-minded Substack focused on Chicago — RSVP here) and San Francisco this Saturday, March 29 (more info and RSVP here).

You can find all events on our events page and instructions for organizing your own reader meet-up here.

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I don’t have a whole piece in me about this, but to me the most striking thing about Signal-gate is not the conduct (which was sloppy and embarrassing but also on some level understandable) but the impulse when caught to start telling obvious lies about what occurred.

It’s of course impossible to say exactly what happened, but everyone has used chat apps and everyone is familiar with the basic concept of autocomplete guessing the wrong person’s name. I’ve never mistakenly added someone to a group text, but I have absolutely included the wrong person on emails many times over the years. To do it in this specific context is ridiculous and a case study in why you’re not supposed to use consumer-grade products to conduct national security business. But it could have been an opportunity to launch a grownup conversation about the problems with FOIA and the Presidential Records Act and the practical cost that goo-goo transparency legislation imposes on the government. A conversation that would start with some people fessing up and apologizing.

Instead, we’ve seen a bizarre campaign of lies, absurd attacks on Jeffrey Goldberg (who I have my problems with but literally didn’t do anything), and zero humility. And insanely, Fox News and a nontrivial share of other partisan media have gone along with it. I don’t want to be too bombastic about this story, but the total dissolution of truth in the wake of a screwup is truly an illustration of the totalitarian potentiality in the MAGA movement.

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It’s the last mailbag of the month, which means our first four questions are from GiveDirectly donors — thank you again for your support!

Gordon S: My daughter is an economics major who is graduating in June. Assuming it doesn't somehow get cut by DOGE, she will then be starting a two year role as a research assistant at the Fed in July. She hopes to make a career in public policy and is particularly interested in issues of inequality and the economics of health care. Given that context, do you have any suggestions for how she can make the most of those two years, whether it's things she might do at work or outside it? And while I'm primarily thinking about her “professional life,” we'd also be interested in advice you would give a 22 year old for making the most of Washington DC in terms of where to live and things to do or join.

I have spent the vast majority of my DC life in the adjacent U Street & Logan Circle neighborhoods (DC neighborhoods are tiny compared to most other cities), and it’s always been my favorite part of the city. Of course, when I was 22 and living here, it was a much cheaper, much grungier neighborhood than it is today. On the other hand, they pay Federal Reserve research assistants more than I made (yes, adjusting for inflation) as an American Prospect writing fellow.

The main thing I would say about DC, though, is that the most common knock on it —that it’s a boring company town where everyone just wants to talk about their work — is definitely true.

But the flip side is that one of the best things about DC is that it’s a boring company town where everyone wants to talk about their work. If you’re a Federal Reserve research assistant who majored in economics and is particularly interested in issues of inequality and the economics of health care, you can meet a lot of people in this town who want to talk to you about this.

You can meet economists doing research in these areas, you can meet public health professionals who have adjacent interests, you can meet political practitioners who know about these things as campaign issues, you can meet lobbyists who work for relevant industries. There are a lot of people who will be willing to listen to you talk about your research and share their own insights that may be of interest. Because the population structure of DC has changed so much since World War II, a lot of young people in this town are sharing large single-family homes with roommates. Some people put a high premium on privacy and prefer to rent a studio, but I think the group house lifestyle is a great way to get to know people when you’re new. There are lots of different in-person policy-related events at the different think tanks where you can get some free food and meet interesting people. The various locations of Politics & Prose are always hosting book talks of different kinds. She should come to a Slow Boring happy hour!

Amber M: (parent of three kids in a big urban district), for both Kate and Matt: In what ways have your views of education policy changed since becoming a parent in a big urban district? My (gringo) kids go to Spanish-immersion school, so I have all kinds of proselytizing takes about that now. But more prosaically my experience in a district with a dysfunctional board (and now a badly executed state takeover) has made me a proponent of mayoral control. 

I have been a proponent of charter schools for a long time and I continue to be a proponent of charter schools. There are some excellent charter networks in America, and cities and states should allow (and indeed encourage) them to expand. It’s a very important element of our education system, and one that a lot of blue jurisdictions underutilize.

That being said, something that you see more clearly as a parent is the extent of the gamesmanship that exists in the charter system. The easiest way to make a “good school” is to just select for high-ability students with educated, put-together, engaged parents. Charters are not formally allowed to do this, but they find lots of ways to sort of implicitly do it. The one that drives me nuts in this town is that DCPS middle schools start in sixth grade — but many charter schools start middle school intake for fifth grade. So elementary school parents who are below-average in attentiveness or interest in school quality don’t realize they should be entering the lottery for middle school for fifth grade, and by the time sixth grade rolls around, there are no slots at the best charter schools. Thus, like magic, you screen out the bottom third of parents.

What’s worse is that the politics of charter schools are so polarized that in practical terms, you’re either “pro-charter” (i.e., don’t complain about this) or “anti-charter” (i.e., try to sabotage and undermine the charter sector at every turn). I find it frustrating because I genuinely think these schools are good and important and that when the anti-charter people win, that’s very bad. But we should, in fact, try to make them follow the spirit of the rules!

Pierce G: Alternative histories: which world would you rather live in? Please select one counterfactual and explain your choice [Parts A and B are separate questions]:

• Part A) Romney defeats Obama in ’12 or Trump defeats Biden in ‘20

• Part B) Gore defeats Bush in ’00 or Clinton defeats Trump in ‘16

For these alternatives, assume events before the counterfactual accord with history whereas anything after the counterfactual can be different. 

I think “Romney beats Obama” is very overrated. I respect Romney’s work as both a governor and a senator, but that 2012 campaign he ran was nuts and if he’d won, he would have been in a position to implement really rotten policies. By contrast, in retrospect, Trump winning in 2020 would pretty clearly have been better than the actual arc of January 6, securing impunity, and then winning with no remorse.

On B, I think “Clinton beats Trump.” I like to joke around with Gore wins scenarios, but it’s really not obvious to me what would have happened. By contrast, if Trump had lost in 2016, everyone would have said that the obviously vile things about him were, in fact, political weaknesses that Republicans should avoid in the future. The correct interpretation of him winning would have been that it was smart of Trump to moderate on Medicare, but the actual interpretation we’ve gotten has been something like, “The obviously vile things about Trump are actually virtues.” And that’s left us in a deeply cursed political universe.

Adam B: Cambridge, MA recently passed landmark housing policy reform. As it rolls out, what will you be most interested in observing in order to gauge whether or not this policy supports or contradicts your beliefs about the impacts of housing policy on affordability and growth?

I don’t think anything that happens will either support or contradict my beliefs, it will inform what my beliefs should be.

There are I think two interesting questions in the mix. At its most expansive, the bill allows for apartments that are up to six stories tall, as long as you have:

• A 5,000-square-foot lot

• Five-foot rear and side setbacks

• 20 percent of units are set aside as “affordable”

Will anyone actually build such a building? The same zoning reform will also let you build a four-story apartment without the affordability requirement. This is “the right way” to do inclusionary zoning in the sense that it is purely additive. But I’m still curious, does it actually generate any units? Or is it just the way of taking what could have been a visionary citywide six-story apartment rule and turning it into a de facto four-story rule?

I’m also curious what the impact on rents will be. To me, it is axiomatic that increasing the housing supply in some sense increases housing affordability. But I never love simplistic promises that Zoning Reform X will lead to Lower Prices in City Y. For one thing, lots of people oppose zoning reforms precisely because they fear that the disamenity of more traffic congestion will tank desirability. But also, does a lot of new units in Cambridge reduce prices in Cambridge? Does it reduce the pace of gentrification in Somerville next door? Does it poach residents from Boston? The basic logic of supply and demand tells us that more supply means lower prices for someone. But the fabric of urban ecosystems is complicated, and it’s not obvious to me where you’d expect the impact to show up.

Julian Hoffman: Curious on your thoughts on this NYT article on “spring break for the teens of NY's elite,” especially given the involvement of Dalton. Is this a topic worth covering? Do you see this as significantly different than private school vacations of the past? Do you still have your wristband in a junk drawer?