In This House, We're Angry When Government Fails
About this episode
Klein, political scientist Steven Teles, and 'Recoding America' author Jennifer Pahlka argue Democrats have become the party of defending institutions rather than making them work. Teles describes a new class politics: professionals who run institutions versus those subjected to them, with liberalism professionalized and populism as the reaction. Pahlka explains how procedural accretion — hiring rules that select for résumé-matching, 'sue, sue, sue' adversarial legalism, and endless permitting — has made government slow and untrustworthy, and why even well-intentioned process now blocks outcomes like housing and clean energy. They discuss civil service reform, the Democrats' losses in blue cities, Clinton-era 'reinventing government,' and Josh Shapiro's rapid I-95 repair as a model of 'I-95-ness': the willingness to suspend barriers and deliver. The conclusion: loving institutions means reforming them.