Let’s begin with a definition, by example, of dysfunctional governing: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the United States Health and Human Services Secretary.
In 2000, the World Health Organization determined that according to its criteria, the United States had eliminated measles. But 2025 saw sustained outbreaks, notably in Texas, Utah, Arizona, and South Carolina, to the extent that “elimination status” is in jeopardy. The logical fix is to raise vaccination rates to ensure collective herd immunity. But this is not the CDC plan.
As GovFacts.org notes, RFK, Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative “represents a fundamental shift from collective herd immunity toward what they call ‘medical freedom,’ ‘individual decision-making,’ and ‘radical transparency’ about vaccine safety and ingredients.” Of course, those are morally lofty concepts. If they are linked coherently to people’s dependencies, they can be useful tools for addressing a wide range of social issues. The problem here, however, is that deadly viruses are not the least bit affrighted by righteous rhetoric. The lesson is clear: Take care that the glamour of idealism does not entice away from the sight of real pain and suffering that needs alleviation.
This lesson is hard to heed for the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court. They have favored President Trump on 80 percent of his emergency appeals, many of which reflect unjust indifference toward the needs of the disadvantaged. And in Trump v. Slaughter, they are leaning toward allowing the president to fire a Federal Trade Commissioner without cause. That ruling would reverse a 1935 judgment in Humphrey’s Executor that Congress may create agencies relatively independent of the president’s control. As Justice Elena Kagan has explained, the thinking in Humphrey’s was that “in certain spheres of government, a group of knowledgeable people from both parties—none of whom a President could remove without cause—would make decisions likely to advance the long-term public good.”
Knowledge, the kind acquired through effort, is a precious resource—especially gains in understanding that make the world safer and fairer. We take it for granted at our great peril. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which serves to protect the public from deceptive or unfair business practices, is structured to respect the dialectical nature of learning. Its five commissioners are appointed by the president for seven-year terms. No more than three may be from a single political party, and the president may remove a member only “for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The institution blends distinctive strands of governing policy, including acknowledgment of the president’s executive authority (to appoint and terminate for cause), Congress’s duty to legislate responsibly, the importance of input from both parties, and the need for compromise by experts.
This syncretic approach to addressing people’s needs is in stark contrast to the organizing principle animating conservative decision-making today, namely unitary executive theory, which asserts that the president should have total control over the executive branch. Morally speaking, the theory has an obvious, serious flaw, which has not received sufficient attention: It assumes an ideal president—a virtuous, intellectually curious executive humble enough to appreciate guidance from knowledgeable specialists. But even if paragons of perspicacity were plentiful, the assumption is excessively risky, as the founders well knew, because of the great damage that an all-powerful executive can do, as evidenced by the appointment of RFK, Jr. as HHS secretary.
RFK, Jr. has floated the notion that autism is caused by environmental toxins that have been put “into our air or medicines or food,” but to date extensive research has not found such a causal link. Lacking sufficient facts to support his conclusions, RFK, Jr. cannot argue, but merely pontificate. Granted, he probably truly believes that there is no objective perspective, that all that matters is winning the propaganda war. However, sincerity of cynicism does not excuse the self-deception that upholding the right to self-assertion for its own sake has anything to do with responsible governing. Real idealism seeks not to dominate but to enhance the lives of the underprivileged. This reads like remedial morality, I know, but I feel compelled to state the obvious because RFK, Jr. is indicative of a declension in quality of leadership so serious that even children are not safe from the damaging effects of placing idealization of self (“Viva me!”) above concern for the community.
The Trump administration and the Supreme Court embody an immature social character whose deficiencies in the senses of history, tragedy, and responsibility give rise to several political and intellectual moves that result in a dysfunctional government. First, latch on to the surface logic of idealism, of certainty in an abstract good such as freedom. Then assume that the executive possesses sufficient acuity and fortitude to concretize freedom through addressing individuals’ material and emotional needs—for example, through family-friendly policies—so that they can become freer to pursue growth. Finally, turn a blind eye to massive historical and contemporary evidence that invalidates that assumption, such as accounts of the myriad ways in which the vulnerable suffer needlessly at the hands of authoritarian bureaucracies—for example, in China, Russia, and, increasingly, America—that regard the individual as expendable because leaders are too small-minded to see, in William Blake’s words, “a world in a grain of sand.”
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