Policy Failure Is a Failure of Empathy - Musings, Part 1 in a series

It might be that all policy failure is simply a failure of empathy.

Tribes have emerged in America and it is becoming more difficult to create public policy because these tribes spill across traditional geographic boundaries. It has become more difficult to create the cohesion needed to, say, reduce poverty or create public works programs that engage people in something like the common good.

It is unlikely to occur to people who can’t relate to each other to even formulate public policy that suggests a common fate. And yet it is becoming more impossible to escape one another.

Empathy may not be an act of compassion. It may be that empathy simply shows awareness. We are all in this together.