I have three pieces of advice for up-and-coming policy professionals: (1) If you get experience in Congress, work for an energetic member, not a sleepy one; (2) a “no” campaign is always easier than a “yes” campaign; and (3) related to number two, if you want a policy win, oppose something so bad that it falls of its own weight.

Some of these insights come from doing things wrong, but I looked pretty good starting my policy career opposing an initiative that tried to eliminate private health insurance and make California’s government the single payer for health care. The polling was lopsided in our favor in the latter weeks of the 1994 campaign against Proposition 186. One of our final “Whoppers of the Week”—releases aimed at debunking claims from our opponents—derided the idea that a small enough loss was a sign that socialized medicine was gaining ground. No, 73 percent to 27 percent is just a loss.

But the most whopping of policies I have succeeded in opposing is the US federal REAL ID Act. This was a national identification (ID) law passed in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Everything you probably think about REAL ID is wrong. Most importantly, having a national ID would not secure cost-effectively against terrorism. It would waste privacy and erode civil liberties for no effective gain. Much of this ground is covered in my REAL ID–inspired book, Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood (Cato Institute, 2006).

REAL ID was not a recommendation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (also known as the 9/11 Commission). The 9/11 Commission dedicated three‐quarters of a page to the question of identity security, out of more than 400 substantive pages. (Its entire treatment of the subject is on page 390.) And the REAL ID Act repealed the provisions in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 that Congress had passed responsive to the 9/11 Commission’s thinking. The passage of the REAL ID Act canceled a negotiated rulemaking process that was enlisting input from state motor vehicle administrators, privacy advocates, and others.

Some deny it, but REAL ID is emphatically a national ID. It is national in scope, knitting together diverse state systems into a system uniform with respect to its data elements and behind-the-scenes information sharing. It is used for identification. And it is practically required, as driving legally is conditioned on having a state-issued document. (Yes, some states make it more or less easy to carry a nonfederal ID or license consistent with the statute, but the statute aims to get the bulk of Americans into the system and requires sharing all drivers’ data.)

Then there is the question of whether you need a REAL ID to fly. The terms of the law are clear that the federal government (i.e., the Transportation Security Administration) may not accept licenses from states not complying with REAL ID beginning three years after enactment of the statute. But the statute also allows the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to delay implementation in the face of “adequate justification.”

Oh, the justifications, they have been adequate. Thus, the May 11, 2008, deadline for REAL ID compliance—which would soon mean REAL IDs in everyone’s hands—has changed again, and again, and again. That story is told in a piece I wrote in 2014. The latest iteration of it is the new deadline change announced by DHS on December 5, 2022. Off the deadline goes to May 7, 2025—20 years post-passage, almost to the day.

DHS has futzed relentlessly with the meaning of “compliance.” But trying to enforce REAL ID at the current, low level of compliance (in its orthodox sense) would invite stern inquiries from Congress because it would disrupt Americans’ business and vacation travel. And nobody wants that—except, perhaps, for the obscure advocacy organization run by the fellow who wrote the REAL ID statute as a congressional staffer.

It’s Lucy and the football with a more patient cruelty. Time and again, DHS insists that a deadline will be enforced. The word goes out in state and local news reports. And a few more people and states opt in to REAL ID. Maybe, eventually, enough people and states would be buffaloed into carrying REAL IDs that the tiny minority of holdouts could be punished with denied air travel. But it would have to be a tiny minority indeed for the politics to line up well for this national ID system.

So, if you want to be a political winner, try opposing a loser! It can be richly rewarding when, in later years, you write self-congratulatory blog posts based on essentially no present effort.

The post You Don’t Need a REAL ID and You Never Will appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.