Some smart advice to politicians

Don Moynihan is a scholar of how government actually works -- and doesn't. At Can We Still Govern?, he argues that Democratic politicians have lost track of how worthy programs they may set up fail in practice. And he suggests how to do better when it comes to cancelling student debt ...

At the broadest level the Obamacare and student loan examples underline that policymakers need to update their basic theories of how political acts generate political returns. In the most simple terms, the standard working theory seems to be: 

    •    Public benefits = recipient gratitude and goodwill 

If policymakers were to think more carefully about implementation, they would revise their working theory to be a bit more complicated: 

    •    Public benefits that are easy to get = recipient gratitude and good will
    •    Public benefits that are hard to get = much less gratitude and goodwill
    •    Promised public benefits that are impossible to get = backlash 

Biden is already going to face some backlash from those opposed to the idea of any type of student loan forgiveness. He should do all he can to avoid it from the people the program is intended to help.

If the Biden administration does cancel some student debt as promised in the 2020 election campaign, can they please demonstrate that they can do it without placing crazy burdens on the people who most need help?

Since the Clinton administration, Democrats have allowed themselves to be bullied by Republicans into creating endless procedural fences around the work of government support for the people. In consequence, too often government is appropriately despised by many recipients. But hardly anyone hates Social Security, or Medicare, or stimulus checks during the early COVID era. Government assistance can be made easy. And easy is the politic course of action.