A true polymath, Arthur Brooks is as comfortable talking about ancient philosophy as he is modern politics, as confident delving into human behavior as he is Bach’s concertos. He’s a rare academic scholar who has a spiritual edge to him — an ardent, practicing catholic who also says he has the “heart of an atheist.”
Brooks, a professor of public leadership at Harvard University and former president of the influential conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, had a lengthy phone interview with the Washington Examiner regarding leadership during this unique period. He expects more from our politicians during this crisis but at the same time wants people to remember that the government can’t bring happiness, it can only lower unhappiness.
The author of 11 books, mostly related to politics or the arts, Brooks said that during a crisis, political leaders are like insurance companies, “their number one psychological responsibility is to quell fear by lowering uncertainty. And that’s where they’re not getting good grades.”
If phase one of tackling the coronavirus pandemic is a lockdown where everyone stays home and self-isolates, then Brooks asked, “What’s phase two?”
He said that most government leaders, including many governors and members of the Trump administration, have responded to the pandemic by kicking uncertainty down the line. “They kind of wave their arms and you realize there’s actually no phase two. Well, no wonder people are freaking out. No wonder people are really unhappy.”
At the same time, Brooks, who is a right of center independent, pointed out that one of the biggest misunderstandings amongst the public and politicians is the belief that the government can bring about human flourishing and happiness.
Brooks, 55, was raised in Washington State and has described his upbringing as being liberal. After high school, he skipped college and pursued a career as a professional French hornist for close to 12 years, before studying economics at Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey and also received a master’s degree from Florida Atlantic University, also in economics. Brooks then pursued a doctorate in public policy at the Pardee RAND Graduate School before teaching public policy at Georgia State University and Syracuse University. He became president of the American Enterprise Institute in 2008. He led the conservative think tank for over a decade until 2019 when he left and ended up joining the faculty at Harvard.
“Public policymakers who want to bring happiness to people always bring misery because they can’t do it. Government is best at lowering the sources of unhappiness,” said Brooks.
Although differentiating between making people happier and lowering their unhappiness may sound like one is splitting hairs, according to Brooks, there is a significant difference between the two goals.
This is because Brooks says that the human brain processes happiness and unhappiness in opposite hemispheres, that the two emotional responses are not being processed in the same part of the brain. Therefore he argues that understanding they are two different cognitions is an essential prelude to understanding how public policy should be created.
The Seattle native said that politicians’ approach to governance at all times, including during this crisis, should be trying to figure out ways to conduct “creative destruction.” This mindset of trying to get the government out of the way is what allows people to have the freedom to pursue their own happiness.
The greatest source of unhappiness for most people, including during this crisis, Brooks said, is uncertainty about the future, being worried about how to feed one’s family, or get proper health care.
The government’s role in helping reduce such unhappiness is a critical one, though, and one that legitimate differences and disagreement exist over how best to achieve, Brooks said.
The social safety net created by the government is one of the greatest accomplishments of the past few decades, Brooks said, “that makes it possible for us to help our brothers and sisters who are poor that we’ve never met.”
Although there are plenty of problems and inefficiencies with our social security system that can be improved upon, Brooks said, “The safety net is a miracle. And I’m grateful for it.”
Brooks said that anxieties related to food, healthcare, and other basic human needs that are particularly present at the moment, are problems the government can solve and should be held accountable for getting better at.
When asked about new and innovative solutions to the historic crisis the country is facing, Brooks said that the current lockdown, although very much necessary due to the pandemic, is not an environment where creative policymaking can flourish. However, the pandemic has created “an opportunity for personal spiritual transcendence and a laboratory for good ideas and public policy,” in the near future.
One public policy idea that Brooks would like to see experimented with during this crisis is radical deregulation for small entrepreneurs to allow new small business owners to flourish. Relaxing the $15/hour minimum wage the country is moving towards and creating a negative income tax or a negative wage tax could be effective ways of doing this, Brooks said.
He also sees this as a unique moment in history where the federal budget deficit, already sky-high and only climbing due to the coronavirus relief spending, could be tackled by selling a lot of the public property the government currently owns. Putting some publicly-owned properties into private hands and using that money to pay down the national debt would help future generations and make our economy more stable, Brooks said.
It is an idea that Brooks said “drives many people on the left insane,” because they think it will lead to selling beloved national parks like Yellowstone or Yosemite.
“They think we’re going to sell Yosemite and they’re going to put condos next to El Capitan or something. But nobody’s doing that. That’s nuts. We all agree that’s nuts. But there is all kinds of stuff that we could do,” Brooks said. “We could do it in a prudent way that doesn’t violate national parks.”
He said such fresh public policy ideas could be accomplished if the public at large and leaders on both sides of the aisle can use the pandemic as a new opportunity to think more flexibly about their approach to traditionally conservative and liberal policies.
On an individual basis, he hopes that people use this unique period to “get really good at habits that help you be more of the person that you want to be.” For Brooks, this has entailed watching mass every morning on television and being better about voluntarily creating his own “personal institutions” when it comes to prayer and meditation, as all external institutions are shut down.
“This is the kind of time when you can adopt a new habit because you’re less exoskeletally aligned,” Brooks said, suggesting that people during this period are forced to be less focused on the external, material world and more on their inner desires, spiritually or psychologically.
