Proportional expectations
On Oklahoma's space program, New Mexico's blue-water navy, and why we should have high expectations for our states
In 1790, the first Census of the United States counted 3,929,214 residents. This national population, just shy of four million, is smaller than the population of 28 states today.
■ It says something about what our expectations should be today for state governments: By any reasonable standard, we should expect them to have the kind of state capacity that we might reasonably expect from a small independent country. That doesn’t mean New Mexico needs a blue-water navy, but it does mean that individual states ought to be able to run their own experiments in areas like service delivery.
■ That doesn’t mean Oklahoma should have a space program, but it does mean it should be internally capable of handling most ordinary functions of government without relying upon the national government to do the work for it. And yet, as the population of the country has grown, we have over-concentrated our expectations of performance in the bureaucracies of Washington, DC.
■ There are some things only a national government can do, and there are some goods and services that benefit from the economies of scale that a very big government can achieve. But we should have high expectations of our states, which should in turn mitigate how much we expect DC to do.
■ It also suggests that we should hold high expectations for the leaders we think of as “local”. After all, the entire group of leaders we know as the Founding Fathers came from a population smaller than that of modern-day Oregon. And that means we wouldn’t be out of line to expect a majority of the states today to contain at least one resident as exceptional as each of the Founding Fathers. That’s one Washington, one Adams, one Jefferson, one Madison, one Monroe, and one Franklin -- at least! -- in each of Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, as well as 24 other states.
■ Do we have those expectations? Do we demand at least that much expression of talent out of our states? Do we limit what’s done at the national level enough to let those gifted individuals close to the people innovate, experiment, and cultivate their skills?
