Now that Donald Trump is visibly weakening, it’s important to start thinking seriously about what comes after him. It’s no secret that I’ve been a big fan of the Abundance movement, which was popularized by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson last year in a book by that name. The core of Abundance is to rebuild American state capacity and create a government that can build things once again. At the top of the list are housing and infrastructure—public goods that will make significant dents in the affordability crisis for ordinary Americans.
Over the past several decades, the United States has lost state capacity, a void that has been most apparent in its failure to build things. There is a huge deficit today in maintenance of our existing roads, bridges, and public utility systems, not to mention new things that we would like to have, like high-speed rail.
Declining state capacity has a number of causes. Chief among them are the number of restrictions we have put upon ourselves, something the legal scholar Nick Bagley calls the “procedure fetish.” We have moved since the 1960s, according to Marc Dunkelman, to a Jeffersonian mindset in which the government is seen as a threat to our liberties; he argues that we need to recapture a “Hamiltonian” perspective in which we see the government as a force for progressive change. Young people with skills and the ability to use technology effectively don’t want to go into government these days, and we have outsourced public goods and activities to private contractors who have their own agendas. Our government often lacks the ability to properly monitor those we have hired to do its work.
Having a positive agenda will be critical if we are to overcome the current crisis of American democracy. Donald Trump is well on his way to being the worst president in our history, scorning basic democratic values and lacking the basic dignity and empathy required of a president. We will not be able to overcome his legacy simply by criticizing him. We need to recognize that Trump’s authoritarianism arose in part from a perception that our government couldn’t do anything well, and needed a strong leader like him to produce outcomes. You can’t beat a would-be authoritarian by criticism alone; if the Democrats are ever to return to power they need to explain what positive things they will do and how the country will be a better place in five or ten years.
The Abundance agenda is not about catering to corporate greed or filling the pockets of oligarchs. Rather, it seeks progressive goals like making housing affordable or dealing with challenges like climate change. I was proud as an American to witness recently the crew of Artemis 2 orbiting the moon. Hopefully it will be the beginning of a series of new explorations. But we should want this to be a collective achievement for the country as a whole, and not the vanity project of a single rich individual. The recovery of state capacity is something that all of us should own.
The ongoing series by American Purpose at Persuasion, “The ‘Deep State’ and Its Discontents,” has already dealt with many of the issues standing in the way of Abundance. It is my hope to continue along these lines, offering concrete suggestions on how the American state can recover its ability to build things and get things done.
Stay tuned.
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is Liberalism and Its Discontents. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column, carried forward from American Purpose, at Persuasion.
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I have a question that is really a comment. How would the Abundance Movement address the federal budget deficit and still rebuild state capacity and public confidence?
Kenneth Rosen's new book Polar War also highlights how embarassingly inadequate our ships and icebreakers are compared to those of other countries and how our military are unprepared for conflict with Russia in Alaska. Reducing research dollars given the changing climate is also a hindrance. It's a great read!