West coast cities are a “mess,” says Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist (see story here).
He’s specifically referring to homelessness, drug use, lower high school graduation rates, and lower home unaffordability because of restrictions on residential construction.
Kristof (photo, left; profile here), 65, is a very smart guy; the son of college professors, he graduated from Harvard with a Phi Beta Kappa, and studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, earning a law degree with high honors there.
He says it’s a regional problem, not “a problem with liberalism across the board,” arguing people are better off in Democratic than Republican states in terms of expectancy, income, education, child poverty, and graduation rates, east coast cities don’t have the problems plaguing California and Oregon.
He blames it on less effective Democratic leadership, due to west coast liberal politics being “infected with an ideological purity that is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes.”
“Politics always is part theater, but out West too often we settle for being performative rather than substantive,” he wrote. He argues good intentions aren’t enough, and “the best path” to improving opportunities and quality of life is “a relentless empiricism.”
Kristof, who self-identifies as liberal, said “we need to get our act together.” He wanted to do something about it; he tried running for Oregon governor, but didn’t get on the ballot because of residency requirements.