How Liberals — Yes, Liberals — Are Hobbling Government

In my columns and on this show over the past few years, I’ve argued that to achieve the goals liberals hold most dear, we need a liberalism that builds. A liberalism that builds everything from multifamily housing and mass transit systems to transmission lines and solar farms. And we need a liberalism that can build it all quickly, cheaply and effectively. But even in the places where liberals have governing power, they are often failing to do exactly that. Why? Nicholas Bagley is a law professor at the University of Michigan, the former chief legal counsel to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the author of a fascinating paper called “ The Procedure Fetish .” In it, Bagley argues that liberals — liberal lawyers in particular — have helped hobble the very government they now need to act swiftly and decisively. It’s easy to see how conservatives have strategically used a thicket of procedures and paperwork to slow down government, but what Bagley shows is that liberals too have been complicit in that project — to the detriment of many of the very causes they hope to advance. So this is a conversation about what I’ve come to think of as the divided soul of American liberalism — one that simul…