Podcast Summary

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Episode: How We Built a Government That Can’t Build Anything
Guest: Mark Dunkelman, author of Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress and How to Bring It Back
Release Date: January 12, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode examines why American government, once capable of big, bold collective action, now seems unable to execute projects at scale—whether it’s building infrastructure, transitioning to clean energy, or addressing the housing crisis. Host Sean Illing and guest Mark Dunkelman explore the historic tension between liberty and authority in American life, how well-intentioned progressive reforms ended up paralyzing decision-making, and what it might take to restore government’s ability to execute important tasks.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Foundational Tension: Liberty vs. Authority

• America has always balanced between the Jeffersonian suspicion of centralized state power (valuing individual liberty) and the Hamiltonian belief in empowering government to act collectively.
• Dunkelman: “America is betwixt and between two impulses... Jefferson writes [the Declaration] and it’s born from an impulse to say there is some big bureaucracy that is far away that is coercing us... Hamilton... played a larger role in the construction of the Constitution... his idea is we need to bring back power to a centralized authority that will be able to make choices.” (04:03)

2. Cycles of Distrust and Overreach

• The U.S. system is uniquely structured to oscillate between periods of excessive government control and periods of stifling chaos and gridlock.
• Historical abuses (institutional racism, Vietnam, Watergate, corporate capture) have led Americans to lose faith in institutions—often for good reason.
• Illing: “We just don’t have a lot of faith in our institutions. And if we’re honest, it’s because they haven’t been all that trustworthy in many cases.” (07:38)

3. When Government Got It Right: The TVA Example

• The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is cited as a rare moment when government delivered on bold action, dramatically improving a neglected region’s fortunes in a short period.
• Dunkelman: “[The TVA] was... government doing enormous good at incredible speed, at vast scale.” (12:36)
• The TVA wasn’t perfect—issues of segregation, environmental impact, etc.—but it represented effective, large-scale public action where the market failed.

4. Why Can't We Build Like That Anymore?

• Modern barriers: Regulatory regimes, legal obstacles, and community veto powers now make it nearly impossible to execute at scale.
• Example: The Biden administration’s $7.5B EV charger initiative resulted in only 58 chargers over three years because of “a different system” replete with bottlenecks. (16:00)
• Dunkelman: “You can’t build the transmission lines today because from one place to the next, everyone’s got an objection… since the TVA... we’ve created a whole legal regime designed to protect incumbents.” (14:00)

5. The Moses/Moses Backlash: Progressivism’s Paradox

• Progressive backlash against undemocratic authority—symbolized by Robert Moses’s unchecked power—led to a cascade of reforms: environmental reviews, community consultation, historic preservation, and legal rights to sue.
• Dunkelman: “By design, progressives have made it very hard to make change... because we were afraid that there would be Robert Moses fakers doing terrible things.” (21:19)

6. Today's Problem: Bottlenecked by Process

• Illing: “They replace the top-down tyranny or the top-down authoritarianism with a kind of bottom-up obstructionism.” (32:39)
• NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act), zoning laws, and other post-1970 procedural reforms were meant to prevent abuse, but have ossified into mechanisms for paralysis.
• NEPA reviews ballooned from intended 50-page memos to “thousands and thousands and thousands of pages” to preempt lawsuits. (30:15)

7. The Housing Crisis as Symptom

• Legal structures and incumbent opposition (homeowners/renters averse to change) conspire to prevent new housing, even when land and know-how exist.
• The progressive fantasy is that enough consensus-building will deliver buy-in from all stakeholders—but in practice, it just leads to stalemate.
• Dunkelman: “We have replaced the top down with sort of a bottom up tyranny.” (33:13)
• There must be a process for community input, but “at the end of the day, you can’t have an endless process. Someone needs to be able to have the decision.” (36:39)

8. Restoring Discretion, Delivering Outcomes

• Today’s public servants are deeply constrained, more focused on avoiding lawsuits and following process than on solving problems.
• Dunkelman: “We need to make it so that these people have a requirement not to be as oblivious to public concern as Robert Moses was, but that they do have some discretion to make decisions in the public interest.” (36:59)

9. Collapse of Trust: Cause, Consequence, and Hope

• Trust in government has cratered—from 80% in the early 1960s (“do what’s right”) to 20% today (45:02).
• Historical cycles show that it is possible to rebound. “If government begins doing small things well, people will begin to see the value in having public institutions that are effective... I’m actually fairly bullish that... wanting to make things better... will re-emerge.” (47:08)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It is hard not to look at the TVA and not gawk…” — Mark Dunkelman (10:38)
• “[Today] you can’t build the transmission lines... everyone’s got an objection... all sorts of reasons that we can’t do it.” — Mark Dunkelman (14:02)
• “We are going to put checks and balances on this centralized form of democratic government... the upshot is it just becomes much more difficult for someone like Robert Moses... to do things.” — Mark Dunkelman (19:47)
• “No one wants change. Everyone wants more housing theoretically in the broader region, but nobody wants it nearby them.” — Mark Dunkelman (33:19)
• “If you are today a public servant... your experience is not the same—right? You go and you spend your time thinking about ‘how am I going to make sure we follow this rule to a T’... and by the end, you realize you’ve been there for 20 years and you actually haven’t made progress.” — Mark Dunkelman (36:59)
• “We need to be able to make hard choices between hard things... creating systems where everyone has a voice... but no one has a veto, which almost everyone has today.” — Mark Dunkelman (43:31)
• “I have faith that if government begins doing small things well, people will begin to see the value in having public institutions that are effective.” — Mark Dunkelman (47:33)

Key Timestamps

• 01:02 — Episode setup: American dysfunction and the core tension between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian impulses
• 04:03 — Hamilton, Jefferson, and the problem of governance structure
• 10:38 — TVA and the high-water mark of government “getting things done”
• 14:00 — Modern legal regime and why we “can’t build” anymore
• 16:00 — The EV charger fiasco as a modern example
• 19:45 — The Robert Moses era and the progressive response
• 21:19 — The shift in progressive attitudes towards bureaucratic power
• 30:15 — NEPA and the proliferation of procedural bottlenecks
• 33:13 — The housing crisis and “bottom-up tyranny”
• 36:39 — The need for someone to decide—and for public servant discretion
• 43:31 — What a better model of governance decision-making could look like
• 45:02 — Collapse of public trust, and prospects for restoring it
• 47:33 — Optimism for slow, incremental rebuilding of institutional trust

Tone and Takeaways

• The episode takes a candid, often critical look at American governance, blending historical narrative with forward-looking inquiry.
• Dunkelman laments regulatory overgrowth but maintains a hopeful stance: Americans can, through “small things done well,” regain faith in the institutions they both need and fear.
• Both speakers seek nuance—acknowledging the reasons for losing faith, the necessary evolution of checks and balances, and the pitfalls of nostalgia for strongly centralized power.

Summary for New Listeners

If you want to understand why the U.S. can’t seem to execute ambitious policies anymore, this episode traces the roots deep into America’s founding tension over power—through the glory and excesses of mid-20th century government action, the backlash of procedural reform, right up to today’s paralyzing web of regulation and community veto. Mark Dunkelman offers accessible stories, clear-eyed criticism, and a glimmer of optimism for how we might get unstuck—if we can learn again how to trust, decide, and build.