Confirmed: American Government Is Broken

There’s more good commentary on the old America, the one that’s broken and needs to fix itself.

Two commentators, both of whom have spent time in China recently, have come back to worry on the bone that everyone seems to be chewing now, asking: is America in permanent decline, or can it be fixed?

I noted recently that the political process is broken, and it’s a theme we’ll see more of as the country comes to terms with what Obama’s first year has shown us. I think in 2009 we saw a great president get weighted down to a crawl because Congress and his own administration was captured by lobbyists.

We’ve seen obstruction to change, and a lack of will to change, that serve at least to show us how paralyzed the systems of government have become.

James Fallows has over 10,000 words at The Atlantic contemplating the questions of how badly America is broken right now. He concludes that external competition has very little bearing on our current issues, and that the American spirit is still in good shape, but that government is gridlocked.

That is the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke. One thing I’ve never heard in my time overseas is ‘I wish we had a Senate like yours.’
- How America Can Rise Again

Fallows recounts how special-interest groups take bites out of the total national wealth, easier to implement than to remove. This amounts over time to a gradual hardening of the arteries, and “government’s progressive loss of the ability to adapt” to the requirements of the people.

Fallows is not optimistic that we the people can reform our government, but he makes a point that I really want to emphasize: when public life goes down, private life goes down after it. A nation without a strong, democratic public-policy interest cannot progress scientifically or economically.

Fallows points out that California has now been forced to start on the road that demonstrates this.

And since this seems counter to the easy Libertarian notion that less government is good for the private sector, as a one-time libertarian analyst and essayist I want to come down heavily with Fallows on this point. Read his article for greater illustration.

A second analysis of the American decline (or not) gets into the nuances with an actual checklist we can sink our teeth into. Professor Orville Schell has been thinking about our national condition for some years as he travels around the world, and his tentative conclusions are reprised in the Los Angeles Times under three headings:

• Aspects of U.S. life that are still vigorous and filled with potential.
• Aspects of U.S. life that still function but need help.
• Aspects of U.S. life in need of drastic intervention.

Along with the national infrastructure, the airports and the public schools, Professor Schell dumps both federal and state government into the last category, “in need of drastic intervention.” Yep.

And note also his warning for the future:

I started keeping these lists because I was searching for things that would banish that dispiriting sense that America is in decline. And yet the can-do list remains unbearably short and the can’t-do one grows each time I travel.
- America’s can’t-do list

Can we fix America? It’s clear that government will not fix itself. And Obama’s inability to change it may have surprised him as much as it surprised us. He has yet to turn to the only people who can help him – us the people ourselves – and he may never. I think he’s the best we’ll ever get, and if he fails to enact change in the government then it’s only us left.

As we know from Kevin Drum’s analysis of Wall Street and its capture of both government and media, the answer to much of our government’s paralysis lies with campaign-finance reform. The administration itself is beholden to its contributors also.

We can fix the productive economy by developing the new sustainable industries and combating climate change. This takes government, and government will increasingly find itself compelled to be present and active in these areas, especially as they show their profitability and GDP-strengthening virtues.

But how to get the thieves out of the new economy, and how to get the government to attend to the commonwealth? I’m hearing agreement that a new refrain must begin to call the campaign contributions and the lobbyist dollars the bribes that they are.

Political rhetoric founded on calling bribes what they are would be the start of a good thing for the Union.