In a provocative piece in the NY Times published last November, David Frum made a series of observations that should be widely shared.
Frum included a surprising defense of the welfare state in his article, observing that you should never tear down a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place; he points out that much of the welfare state was devised not just because people wanted to be compassionate, but because they also recognized it could create greater social and economic stability. Frum demonstrates in this article the value of studying why things are the way they are.
I remain struck by his closing paragraph and want to focus on that:
The U.S. political system is not a parliamentary system. Power is usually divided. The system is sustained by habits of cooperation, accepted limits on the use of power, implicit restraints on the use of rhetoric. In recent years, however, those restraints have faded and the system has delivered one failure after another, from the intelligence failures detailed in the 9/11 report to the stimulus that failed to adequately reduce unemployment, through frustrating wars and a financial crash. The message we hear from some Republicans — “this is no time for compromise” — threatens to extend the failures of governance for at least two more years. These failures serve nobody’s interest, and the national interest least of all.
Like lots of progressives I've been frustrated with the Democratic officials willingness to compromise - not because compromise itself is anathema but because they're compromising on the wrong things - it's as if they've compromise itself is the goal. By contrast, as Frum points out, Republicans have taken the opposite position arguing for no compomise ever. The parties have become dysfunctional mirrors of one another.
And in between (metaphorically not literally) those dysfunctional parties, we have a series of failures - areas where government policy and action has failed the nation. A Democratic party so eager to compromise there seems to be no principle upon which they'll stand and a Republican party so unwilling to compromise there is no principle on which they will not stand, no matter how insane, unreasonable, or unworkable it actually is. Exactly what is the compromise position between end of life counseling and imaginary death panels?
Is rising and increasingly bitter partisan-ism to blame for our series of systemic failures? To ask it bluntly, has a bitterly divided political class resulted in a nation unable to respond to its very real problems? Millions of Americans lack access to affordable health care which places greater and greater burdens on society as a whole. Millions of Americans have seen their jobs and their savings vanish. Yet our government is so entrenched in partisan perspectives and goals that it has responded in a way that is wholly inadequate. If you look at the 1990s, you see the roots of our current political problems, and an apparent inability to distinguish what matters from what doesn't matter, a willingness to engage in the politics of personal destruction and a willingness to put short term political gain ahead of what's good for the nation.
Our current problems are far more serious than those we faced in the 1990s and our elected officials seem to have shrunk in stature. Even those politicians we can still admire for their personal integrity seem wholly inadequate the challenges of our nation. They are, to put it simply, politicians not leaders and certainly not - to use a sexist term - statesmen. Our current crop of leaders seem increasingly incapable of comprehending our national problems. And those that do comprehend them lack the will or the courage to confront them honestly. And so we struggle with high unemployment and a national infrastructure in tatters, our national priorities long lost and our sense of direction hopelessly clouded.
The system has failed and continues to fail. The blame, however, cannot be placed solely at the feet of elected officials. Too many voters literally do not know for whom they are voting, what they stand for, what they've campaigned on. Too many Americans don't even vote - they simply dismiss the political process as corrupt and in so doing make it easier for corrupt politicians to cling to office year after year, decade after decade. Too many Americans seem willing to buy the easy nostrums of painless transformation, and poisonous blaming of the anonymous "other" - whether that other is the mythical welfare queen, the rabid, mysterious liberal bent on social engineering, the gay socialists out to destroy marriage or whatever bugbear haunts the febrile imaginings of politicians without principle who sell their snakeoil to a public yearning for answers. Too many Americans want simple solutions in a complex world. And the yearn honestly for ways to understand what is happening to them and their families and too many politicos would rather tell them easy lies than complicated truths.
As voters we have done a poor job holding our elected officials to a higher standard - not of marital fidelity or love of family, but a standard of patriotism which truly values that which is good for all of us not just convenient.