The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [101]
The economic dysfunctions in America today are real, but, by and large, they are not the product of deep inefficiencies within the American economy, nor are they reflections of cultural decay. They are the consequences of specific government policies. Different policies could quickly and relatively easily move the United States onto a far more stable footing. A set of sensible reforms could be enacted tomorrow to trim wasteful spending and subsidies, increase savings, expand training in science and technology, rationalize the tax code, create a workable immigration process, and achieve significant efficiencies in the use of energy.* Policy experts do not have wide disagreements on most of these issues, and none of the proposed measures would require sacrifices reminiscent of wartime hardship, only modest adjustments of existing arrangements. And yet, because of politics, they appear impossible. The American political system has lost the ability for large-scale compromise, and it has lost the ability to accept some pain now for much gain later on.
As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak economy, or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics. An antiquated and overly rigid political system to begin with—about 225 years old—has been captured by money, special interests, a sensationalist media, and ideological attack groups. The result is ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia—politics as theater—and very little substance, compromise, and action. A “can-do” country is now saddled with a “do-nothing” political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving. By every measure—the growth of special interests, lobbies, pork-barrel spending—the political process has become far more partisan and ineffective over the last three decades.
It is clever contrarianism to be in favor of sharp party politics and against worthy calls for bipartisanship. Some political scientists have long wished that America’s political parties were more like European ones—ideologically pure and tightly disciplined. Well, it has happened—there are fewer and fewer moderates on either side—and the result is gridlock. Europe’s parliamentary systems work well with partisan parties. In them, the executive branch always controls the legislative branch, and so the party in power can implement its agenda easily. The British prime minister doesn’t need any support from the opposition party; he has a ruling majority by definition. The American system, by contrast, is one of shared power, overlapping functions, and checks and balances. Progress requires broad coalitions between the two parties and politicians who will cross the aisle. That’s why James Madison distrusted political parties, lumping them together with all kinds of “factions” and considering them a grave danger to the young American Republic.
I know that these complaints all sound very high-minded and squishy. And I know there has long been nasty partisanship in America, even in Madison’s own era. But there has also been a lot of bipartisanship, especially over the past century. Reacting to the political bitterness of the late nineteenth century—the last time there were two close elections in succession—many American leaders tried to create forces for good, problem-solving government. Robert Brookings established the Brookings Institution in Washington in 1916 because he wanted an organization “free from any political or pecuniary interest . . . to collect, interpret, and lay before the country in a coherent form, the fundamental economic facts.” The Council on Foreign Relations, founded five years later, also consciously