political reform

I have just re-read James Fallow’s article in this month’s Atlantic Monthly: I highly recommend it to anyone who is willing to take a detached and thought provoking look at the ‘malaise’ of America. His point, in brief, is that America as a society is functioning fairly well, but that it’s government is broken. He doesn’t mean the current administration, but the entire system of government. It has become unresponsive, unwieldy, and incapable of rising to anything remotely like a strategic challenge.

On this point I could not agree more.

The American system of government is antiquated. It has lasted well beyond its expiry date. The problem is well illustrated by the debacle that was health care reform: the entire process came down to a prolonged negotiation with the so-called ‘gang of six’ senators whose votes were necessary to ensure passage of legislation. Those six senators came from states with a negligible portion of the nation’s population yet they were able to enforce their own views on the majority. It was a gloriously undemocratic spectacle that the country should have been ashamed of.

Health care reform was a major discussion point during last year’s election campaign. Obama won that election with a thumping majority of votes. We had every right to expect him to get legislation passed. Yet he had to fight tooth and nail for what is a very watered down bill. Even now its fate hangs in the balance. It is no comfort to argue, as some do, that the legislation might be watered down, but that it is a start: over the next decade or so we can get it right by adding or subtracting the pieces that make it dysfunctional.

That’s the talk of a loser. Why should we ‘make do’?

Why should Americans not get what they so clearly voted for?

No wonder there is a deep disillusionment with government.

The voters keep sending in signals that the system cannot respond to.

Fallows goes on to describe similar systemic problems: the national infrastructure is appallingly old and at risk of collapse; we deliberately underfund research; we rely heavily on imported talent and so on.

This is exactly what I have been talking about here for months. America seems incapable of confronting, and then dealing with, big issues. Instead it tinkers with tactics. It re-arranges deck chairs very well, but ignores icebergs with a tenacity that is frighteningly stolid.

Take the stimulus package.

There was precisely one policy option in the textbook bag of tricks to deal with the crisis back early last year: a big fiscal injection by the government. Monetary policy, which is the usual and first line of defense, was ruled out by the so-called ‘zero-bound’ problem, interest rates were already too low to be lowered any more. It was clear we needed stimulus. But at no point could we even entertain a package that was sufficient. Such spending was deemed ‘politically infeasible’. More to the point we could not even use the money to address any of our infrastructural problems. To do that would have incurred the wrath of the anti-government politicians who had just dug the hole we were in. So we had to negotiate with the gang of six. We ended up with a stimulus that only a banana republic could be proud of. There were no bold projects in the tradition of the New deal era. It was all small and spread about. Plus one third was in the form of tax cuts that have produced no enduring value. In other words, in our timidity we added a trillion dollars to our debt and got nothing longer term than a kick for the short term economy. That’s certainly valuable, but it will hardly stand as a monument to our resolve. Talking of monuments: the anti-government politicians even stripped the stimulus of money to clean up our national monuments: apparently cleaning the Lincoln Memorial and so on is a waste of taxpayer money.

My own acid test is still right here in New York City.

The reconstruction of the World Trade Center has been an embarrassing saga of political and legal infighting. Only now is a building taking shape. So much for showing the enemy what we’re made of. Anyone who dares take on America will have to fight through red tape, and then bribe politicians, just like the rest of us.

Will any of this change?

Here I am a lot less optimistic than Fallows.

I say no.

I come across very few Americans who would countenance a change in their system of government. Everyone seems to think it is the best, so why fix it? Fallows mentions this problem, as I have here also: not a single country has ever copied the American system. That fact alone should cause some reflection. But how many Americans even know that? How many care?

I think we are stuck with it due to a combination of indifference, lack of education, and misdirected jingoism. We are living off of the momentum generated in the immediate post war decades. We have squandered our inheritance on short term trinkets and forgotten to rebuild and maintain the boring but essential things that help sustain us. The decline is hidden. The water supply breaks and we blame government, yet we are unwilling to pay the taxes to rebuild it. We yell when bridges collapse, yet refuse point blank to pay for new ones. We are willing to pay for a huge military, but not new schools. We pour money into plastic surgery, but not into preventative medicine. We conveniently forget that it was the government that invented the internet and not the start-ups who benefitted from it. And we can send men to the moon, but cannot build a high speed train to get from New York to Washington DC at anywhere near world class speeds.

None of these things would matter individually, but cumulatively they are emblematic of a nation good at small stuff and now incapable of big stuff. We cannot even contemplate big projects: we say ‘that couldn’t happen here’ because … legal battles and political gridlock stop us at every turn.

Britain, where I grew up is often presented as a quaint and rigid society. It is hopelessly caught between its imperial past and its European future, but at least it can reform its government. In my lifetime whole geopolitical boundaries have been wiped away: this would be the equivalent of combining New Jersey and New York into a new state to reflect modern commuter realities. London’s boundaries have been re-drawn for similar reasons. Power has been devolved to Scotland and Wales. The House of Lords has been changed and is the throes of being changed again. And, despite the opposition of a sizable minority, Britain has attached itself to Europe. You can argue about any of these moves. My point is that they have all happened within the last three or four decades. These are all very big constitutional changes that Britain was capable of making seamlessly and without too much fuss. Stodgy ‘old Europe’. Stodgy old Britain.

How much has happened here in that time?

That’s our problem. Not the rise of China. Not the shift in economic power to Asia. Our problems are all here right under our noses. Our system of government is out of date. It needs an overhaul.

I say start by abolishing the Senate, doubling the size of the House of representatives, enforcing a non-partisan national re-districting of House seat boundaries, eliminating elections for judges, and making the election of Presidents a straight vote rather than an Electoral College vote. Oh, and get rid of that ridiculous interregnum between administrations. This is the twenty-first century for heavens sake, communications are quick enough for a new administration to get itself ready ahead of time.

It won’t happen of course.

It just can’t be done in America.