My Top 10 Posts of 2024 (#5 - #1)

The most popular columns from Governing Right's first year

Last week, I revealed the first half of my ten most popular posts of 2024. Now, here are the top five.

5. TIE: “James Scott, RIP” and “The Greatest Challenge to Conservative Governing”: 8/1/24 and 7/3/24

Maybe the best thing about writing Governing Right is having an audience that’s equally interested in two posts so different from one another. James Scott passed away this year; he authored Seeing Like A State, in my opinion one of the best books ever written on modern governing. Even though Scott was an anarchist-socialist (NOT my cup of tea), he uncovered basic truths about large-state governing that fit perfectly with Hayek’s and Nisbet’s. My post celebrated Scott’s great work.

This was tied with a long piece I wrote celebrating Frederick Douglass’s famous 1852 Independence Day address, widely known as “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.” In my view, nothing written or said—before or since—more ably challenges American-conservative governing. As I wrote, “This address challenges conservatives to think hard about who benefits from longstanding institutions, how to recognize flaws in traditional practice, and what to do when such flaws are recognized.”

These two posts had nearly identical reader numbers; the former generated more subscribers while the latter generated more emails/comments.

4. “Campaigns Without Policy”: 7/22/24

Kamala Harris was swiftly declared the replacement when Joe Biden departed the 2024 campaign. Prior to her anointment, there was little conversation—and even less debate—about her views on the most pressing issues of the day. This struck me as eerily similar to Donald Trump’s content-lite 2016 and 2020 campaigns. My piece was about our era of policy-free campaigns, where Americans are expected to vote based on vibes instead of agendas. This, I argue, is related to Washington’s dysfunctional governing. We now have campaigns and governing where policy-making seems incidental.

Only one post generated more new subscribers.

3. “Why I Misunderstood So Many Public Leaders”: 9/24/24

In this piece, I tell several personal stories about my maturation process through a variety of governing positions over the years. I describe my slow realization that most public leaders are surprisingly non-ideological; they are far more informed by practical wisdom than theory. This fact, I argue, creates a massive disconnect between those who serve in governing positions and those who comment on their work—the “commentary industrial complex” that reports on governing. These two separate communities think in and speak different languages.

This piece generated the third most likes, comments, and subscribers.

2. “What David Brooks Gets So Wrong”: 12/5/24

For the last half year, I’ve been working on a huge project studying where America’s public leaders were educated. I’d gotten fed up with all of the talk about “Ivy+” schools. My research showed that in most of America, most public leaders were educated in close-to-home public and private schools, with flagship publics leading the way. I wrote about my findings in posts such as “The Public Leadership Role of Public Universities” and “Where Our Leaders Were Educated.”

And then The Atlantic published a long cover story by David Brooks on the dominance of Ivy League schools and other elite privates. Argh!

I wrote this piece—as the title explains—to detail what that essay gets wrong.

This piece had the most views. But a different piece had almost as many views but even more shares and even more generated subscribers.

1. “The Moral Cost of Alarmism”: 7/8/24

In this era of political anxiety and anger, many seem to believe that it is right and good to be alarmed: That’s what we need to defeat our opponents and bring about the dramatic changes needed!

I think that’s wrong. Alarmism, I believe, causes people to give themselves permission to act immorally. When you think the stakes couldn’t be higher, you think just about anything is allowed.

This piece generated the second-most views, the most likes, the most shares, and the most new subscribers.

Thanks for reading in 2024. I hope you stick around for 2025.