The Full Meaning of Good Governance

I was pleased to see New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman taking up the issue of good governance in his column on Sunday, writing that "the other critical factor that still differentiates countries today -- and is not a commodity -- is good governance, which can harness creativity. And that we may be losing." But it seems to me that Friedman has a very different definition of "governance" than I do: "the ability of a society's leaders to think long term, address their problems with the optimal legislation and attract capable people into government." And even more of a problem for the column is that of the six issues he lists--money in politics, political gerrymandering, cable culture, the permanent presidential campaign, the extremism of the internet, and a business community uninvested in the functioning of American government--only one is an actual governance problem, rather than a political one.

This conflation of governance and politics is a significant one, I think. Politics impacts governance, of course, in ways ranging from holds placed on nominees to lead agencies and departments, to the broad policies that are passed and enacted and require shifts in bureaucratic resources and structures. But if we limit our discussion of good governance, or governance at all, to our political problems, we create significant problems for ourselves. And make no mistake about it. Even if money in politics and gerrymandering are significant issues, even if cable culture and the internet are coarsening our discourse about political outcomes, they are political issues, first and foremost, and their impact on governance comes far down the road. Mistaking them for governance issues makes the actual issues of implementing and evaluating policy invisible. And that's a major problem.

Not knowing how America's government works makes it impossible to have a serious conversation about how it ought to work. And that conversation is already small enough as it is. Having people with Friedman's influence marching the focus off in entirely the wrong direction isn't helpful. All the issues he lists should be discussed and scrutinized. They do matter. But when it comes to governance, they're the wrong list of issues entirely.