Nicholas Bagley is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, former Chief Legal Counsel to Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a former attorney in the US Department of Justice. He joins the podcast to talk about his article, “The Procedure Fetish,” in which he calls for liberals to embrace reforms to make federal government agencies less sclerotic and more capable of addressing social problems. Richard presents Bagley with questions surrounding issues such as why we should trust government agencies with more power, the role of cost-benefit analysis, the performance of the FDA during Covid-19, and civil service reform, including President Trump’s executive order that would have made it easier to fire more officials. The two discuss whether there can be a synthesis between the right and left on major issues surrounding government regulation.

Listen to the podcast here, or watch on YouTube.

Links:

• Nicholas Bagley, “The Procedure Fetish”

• Bagley on The Ezra Klein Show

• Bagley on Twitter

• Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk

• Matt Yglesias on Operation Warp Speed and the blowback to it

• Cass Sunstein on the role of OIRA

• Derek Thompson, “The Abundance Agenda”