The Missing Accountability Layer in American Policy

Democratic governance requires accountability. That is the theory. In practice, accountability requires two things that American politics is currently short on: independent analysis and political will to act on what the analysis shows. John Chachas identifies this accountability deficit across three domains in a recent essay for Finance Monthly: COVID policy, artificial intelligence, and the collapse of local journalism.

His starting point is the COVID commission he proposed with Tom Korologos in a March 2023 Wall Street Journal op-ed. The design was deliberate: exclude the people who made the original pandemic policy decisions, bring in respected figures from both parties with no stake in defending those decisions, and let the evidence lead. The proposal named Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as potential co-chairs, specifically because their post-presidential stature allows them to command bipartisan respect.

The commission was never created. In the three years since, the costs of not having it have accumulated. Research published in 2025 confirmed significant COVID-related learning loss, concentrated in communities least able to absorb it. Public health trust has eroded, with one in six Americans remaining insufficiently vaccinated. Federal agencies most responsible for pandemic guidance have had institutional reasons to highlight their performance rather than scrutinize it. What is missing is a shared factual foundation built by people insulated from that institutional defensiveness.

The same accountability gap exists in AI policy. Chachas is explicit about the stakes: AI will eliminate more jobs than optimists admit, and the timeline for serious legislative response trails far behind the pace of technological development. More than 1,200 AI bills were introduced in state legislatures in 2025. Fewer than 12 percent became law. The companies deploying AI most aggressively are not the right parties to evaluate its labor market impacts.

Congress passed the TAKE IT DOWN Act in 2025, criminalizing nonconsensual publication of intimate deepfakes. Chachas had flagged exactly this risk years earlier, writing that “the misuse and abuse of personal images and likeness in an age of AI is going to be a major issue that has to be adjudicated.” The deepfake law addressed one clause. The broader architecture of AI accountability remains unbuilt.

On local journalism, the economic collapse is well documented. The democratic cost, the accountability failures that follow when a community loses reliable local news, is less systematically understood. An independent commission with standing from both parties could produce findings that give legislators political cover to act.

The framework Chachas built for COVID was a civic instrument. The accountability layer missing from American policy is not a partisan idea. It is a governance one, and applying it is less a matter of political philosophy than of political will.