It's Time for Something
Completely Different
By
Michael Hais and Morley
Winograd
As the country’s
political distemper
grows, many
commentators, reflecting
their own generational
biases, mistakenly
assume that voters are
looking for less
government as the
solution to the nation’s
ills. But
survey research data
from Washington think
tank, NDN, shows that a
majority of Americans
(54%), and particularly
the country’s youngest
generation, Millennials,
born 1982-2003, (58%),
actually favor a more
active government,
rather than one that
“stays out of society
and the economy.” As
generational expert
Neil Howe observed,
“Dissatisfaction with
Obama and the Democratic
Congress is probably
more fed by their
failure to use
government boldly and
vigorously to face hard
challenges than by their
excessive boldness.”
What Millennials are
looking for in terms of
public policy, to borrow
John Cleese’s warning to
his Monty Python
audience, is something
completely different
than the tired
approaches of either
party that are grist for
the current partisan
gridlock in Washington.
Millennials are not
interested in letting
ideological posturing
stand in the way of
“getting stuff done,” as
they like to say. Their
generation’s idealism is
always accompanied by a
pragmatic impulse
focused on finding
solutions, not
confrontation. As with
like-minded civic
generations before them,
Millennials want to
reinvigorate the
nation’s institutions,
giving government a much
greater role in
determining basic
citizen responsibilities
in areas as diverse as
health care, education
and environmental
protection.
However, unlike
America’s last civic
generation, the GI
Generation (born
1901-1924), Millennials
do not want to place
responsibility for
achieving their desired
results in a remote,
opaque bureaucracy. They
see government’s role
more like that of their
parents who set the
rules but left room for
negotiation on what the
rewards would be for
abiding by the rules and
the consequences that
would follow for not
doing so. In this
Millennialist approach,
government provides
information and
resources to help
individuals connect and
learn from each other
but let’s each person
decide how best to
discharge their civic
obligations.
The healthcare reform
legislation that was
forged out of the white
heat of the political
debate in Congress came
surprisingly close to
this model, and not to
the ideological demands
that Boomers on both
sides of the aisle
brought to the debate.
Liberals didn’t get
their dream of a single
payer system or even its
“nose-under-the-tent”
counterpart, the
so-called public option.
But conservatives were
unable, even after
Republican Scott Brown’s
surprise election as a
United States Senator
from deep blue
Massachusetts, to
prevent Congress from
mandating that every
person in America buy
health insurance in
order to achieve the
goal of universal
access. By building a
framework for universal
coverage on the
scaffolding of the
existing private
insurance system, the
final legislative
solution used liberal
schemes of regulation
and national mandates to
create a new role for
government, even as it
kept government out of
the business of actually
providing health care.
The final shape of that
reform reflects a new
Millennialist approach
to the making and
implementation of public
policy. This approach
will result in setting
new national standards
in many aspects of our
national life while, at
the same time, allowing
individuals to make
their own choices about
how to comply with those
standards.
The recent adoption by a
majority of states of
national curriculum
standards for what
students must learn in
core disciplines such as
English, math and
science is further
evidence of this trend.
The development of these
standards,
coordinated by the
National Governors
Association Center for
Best Practices and the
Council of Chief State
School Officers,
outlines “the knowledge
and skills students
should have within their
K-12 education careers,”
without dictating how
schools should teach the
material.
Meanwhile the Obama
administration’s “Race
to the Top” grant
program, has sparked a
firestorm of educational
reform legislation in
states competing for the
money that weaken the
hold administrators and
teacher unions currently
have over what goes on
in the classroom. The
demands of the parents
of Millennials for
bottom line results,
reflected in such grass
roots initiatives as the
Parent Revolution in
California and
Connecticut,is providing
the political support
needed to take on the
current educational
monopoly, thereby
opening the door to
widespread
experimentation about
what works best at the
local school level.
While there is no sign
yet at the national
level that a more
Millennialist approach
to addressing concerns
over global warming and
environmental
degradation is in the
offing, the inability of
the Congress to agree on
more bureaucratic
approaches, such as
cap-and-trade, suggest
there is an opportunity
for such ideas to take
hold in the future. For
instance, a campaign to
reduce the carbon
intensive nature of the
nation’s infrastructure
could include a
government sponsored
effort to display the
carbon footprint of most
consumer products and
let individuals decide
how to alter their
personal purchasing
decisions to produce the
most environmentally
favorable results.
Similarly, the goal of
reducing fuel
consumption per family
could be achieved by
providing tax incentives
for telecommuting or for
trading in aging gas
guzzlers for vehicles
that exceed the newly
strengthened fuel
economy standards for
passenger cars. These
policies, and others
like them, would leave
it up to each individual
to decide how much they
wish to contribute to
the nation’s
environmental
improvement. In line
with
behavioral economists
in and outside of the
administration, the
strategy would be to
“nudge” rather than
command behavior in
order to achieve the
desired policy goal.
Given the ever
increasing environmental
sensitivity of younger
generations, the
approach is likely to
accomplish more in terms
of actual carbon usage
reduction than the
ideologically-driven
schemes proposed by
Boomers in Congress.
The
trajectory of public
policy in a Millennial
Era is becoming
increasingly evident.
The push for an
increasing number of
national standards and
preferred behavior will
no doubt cause
libertarians to decry
the evolving “nanny
state” and argue
strenuously against an
increasingly intrusive
government. But if
liberals can give up
their infatuation with
bureaucratic solutions
and keep their focus on
using government to
improve society without
building new
administrative burdens,
the public, led by
Millennials, will rally
to their side. National
consensus, coupled with
localism and
individual choice,will
become the watchwords of
the nation’s newest
civic era.
