That's not satisfying. Could it be?

This post has been moved over from my old Substack.

My latest at The Hub makes a case for a less satisfying but better kind of politics.

This feels really important and I’d love to convince you that I’m right. A common thread to our bad political habits is that it’s just so much more fun to play at politics than it is to work at governing ourselves.

I’ve got folks in my circle who are skeptics of democratic governance. We should be cautious about what democratic governance can offer—flawed people can only offer imperfect policy responses. But I’m not convinced anymore that skepticism of democratic governance is a sufficient argument not to find ways to meaningfully participate in democratic governance. Sometimes there are no good options and you do your best anyway because things can still get worse.

I’m working on another piece about how I think Canada has mostly dodged the type of dysfunction plaguing the U.S. through good luck and not good practices. The time to build those good practices is before people happy to burn everything down have driven most of the good, sane people out of the political process.

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A reminder that you can read Adam Smith’s Digression on Silver with me next month from 1:00–2:00 p.m. EDT on 22 and 24 August. (Register here!) I am planning to approach this with a lot of levity because this section of the book is much-maligned, but it actually is a really great part of the Wealth of Nations. I hope you can spend a couple lunch hours with me.

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If you’re looking for more to read, I can’t recommend Paul Wells enough lately. His writing is delightful. His latest, on international pressure for Canada to hold a formal inquiry into its Covid-19 response, is great and open for all readers. But behind the paywall, his four-part series on communication after the decline of gatekeepers and the legacy media is worth the price of a month’s subscription (at least!). You can find part one of that series here: