IN 2002 this columnist visited the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) in Washington, DC, to renew his driving licence. The queue moved at a glacial pace. The staff alternated between hostile and indifferent. There were lengthy forms to fill in, six documents to produce, confusing instructions and, hanging over everything, the warning that any false answer is a crime. One man said he had sent his paperwork by fax only to be told that the DMV does not accept faxed documents. Then why do you provide a fax number, he asked? We do it as a courtesy. Two of America's brightest Democrats have written books about reforming the public sector: Gavin Newsom's "Citizenville" and Cass Sunstein's "Simpler." Mr Newsom was mayor of San Francisco from 2003 to 2010 before becoming California's lieutenant-governor. He is expected to go on to higher things. Mr Sunstein is a Harvard law professor who was Barack Obama's "regulatory tsar" from 2009 to 2012. He is also one of the authors of "Nudge," a book that advocates guiding (but not forcing) citizens to make wise decisions. Both present themselves as post-partisan: Mr Newsom strokes the tea party; Mr Sunstein boasts that David Cameron, Britain's Conservative prime minister, is a fan of "Nudge." But both argue that Barack Obama has done a lot to improve American government. Mr Newsom begins by lamenting the contrast between government and the private sector, particularly the tech industry in nearby Silicon Valley. "In the private sector and in our personal lives, absolutely everything has changed over the past decade," he notes. In government, very little has. The public sector is top-down and producer-dominated. Silicon Valley is bottom-up, networked and consumer-driven. Government needs to change as radically as it did in the early 20th century, when reformers replaced patronage and corruption with a measure of meritocracy. It needs to become a "platform" for services rather than a machine. It needs to engage citizens rather than treat them as subjects. But citizens need to change, too: becoming problem-solvers, not whingers; and volunteers, not supplicants. This change is already beginning, says Mr Newsom. Public organisations are turning themselves into platforms by putting everything online and producing suites of apps. Volunteers are helping. Code for America provides tech-savvy volunteers for government departments, for example. Manor, Texas, has launched "Manor Labs," which rewards locals when their suggestions for improvement are taken up. Prizes include a ride-along with the police or a chance to be mayor for a day. San Francisco has launched Sfpark, a smartphone app that helps drivers find parking spaces. "Circle less and live more." Mr Newsom's emphasis on citizens fixing their own problems rather than pestering the government is admirable. But he is naive to think that if you simply give more power to ordinary people, government will fix itself. California empowers its citizens through ballot initiatives. The result is a mess: they vote for higher spending but lower taxes. It is not enough just to give people hand-held devices that let them vote for their priorities, as Mr Newsom argues. You have to design intelligent systems that force them (or their representatives) to reconcile their contradictory impulses. The Republic is not a reality show. Mr Sunstein says the problem is that government is not just old-fashioned but over-complicated. Nothing alienates people (or empowers clever lobbyists) so much as complexity. And nothing imposes so many unnecessary costs. But Mr Sunstein claims that he and his colleagues at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs have conducted a successful (if unheralded) war against complexity. They have re-examined old laws to remove outdated bits. They have subjected new laws to rigorous cost-benefit analysis. And they have done their best to ensure that rules are easy to understand. Mr Sunstein argues that his own great passion - nudging people to make sensible choices - is perfectly compatible with simplicity. The best companies are good at combining the two, encouraging people to become or remain customers. Government is learning to be just as clever. Simple? Have you ever filed a tax return? Mr Sunstein has indeed hacked back some thickets of regulation. But the problem is that far bigger thickets have grown up at the same time: the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, both passed in 2010, are hundreds of bewildering pages long, partly because Congress regards laws as comprehensive instruction manuals rather than broad guidelines. America's tax code has almost tripled in volume over the past decade, to 3.8m words. Most of these words are in Klingon. Nine out of ten tax-filers pay for help to complete their returns. And the federal government remains a maze: the Interior Department oversees salmon while they are in freshwater but the Commerce Department takes over as soon as they swim into saltwater. Mr Sunstein prefers to focus on his own office. But you expect a bigger picture from a book subtitled "The Future of Government"; perhaps even the odd mention of foreign countries that have done a better job than America of reducing complexity. Washingtonians argue that the most interesting current political battle is the one for the soul of the Republican Party. In fact, the battle for the Democratic Party's soul is just as exciting. Will it be the party of government employees or empowered citizens? Of taxpayers or tax-eaters? Of the early 21st century or the early 20th? Messrs Newsom and Sunstein are part of a growing army of Democrats who recognise that their party needs to reinvent government. But compared with the vast challenges of reforming Congress and taming the public-sector unions, what they offer in their books is little more than well-intentioned tinkering.