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The great American and Oklahoman humorist Will Rogers had a toxic view of Congress eighty or so years ago and long before Congress bashing became a contact sport for late night television hosts.\u00a0 \u201cEvery time Congress wanted to pass a law, it became a joke,\u201d Rogers quipped.\u00a0 \u201cAnd every time Congress wished to make a joke, they turned it into a law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, the U.S. government is worse than Rogers\u2019 bad joke. Failure to pass a budget is now standard operating procedure.\u00a0 Should the debt-ceiling limit be unreconciled by October 17th<\/sup>\u00a0and the nation defaults, the consequences are almost certainly going to be bad and grow worse the longer government is incapable of action.<\/p>\n Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, could boast in last week\u2019s Financial Times that American gridlock was a sign of a healthy and functioning democracy reflecting the Founder Fathers\u2019 best intentions and not dysfunctionality or worse.\u00a0 Gingrich gets a grade of A for imagination and an F for realism.\u00a0 Something is indeed rotten in Washington.<\/p>\n The fundamental and largely unseen issue is whether a political process designed by the best minds of the 18th<\/sup>\u00a0century can survive the realities of the 21st<\/sup>.\u00a0\u00a0 Nations rise and fall.\u00a0 America is not a fifth century Rome or the Soviet Union in the late 1980\u2019s.\u00a0 However, a system of checks and balances and divided government cannot function without compromise. The polarization of both political parties around their extreme wings is not a prescription for compromise as well as denying the largest bloc of Americans belonging to the stabilizing \u201cmiddle\u201d of full representation.<\/p>\n Worse, politics is about winning whatever issue or election is in play principally by discrediting the opposition and not about providing good governance.\u00a0 Relentless pursuit of money given the ludicrous nature and full time demands of campaign financing preclude bringing the best, brightest and most qualified to Washington especially as negative campaigning has proven so effective in demolishing character through whatever means fair or foul. Hence, experience and wisdom, not mentioned in the Constitution\u2019s four qualifications for president (readers should re-read that document for the details), at least in terms of the past three chief executives, are unlikely to be part of the resumes of candidates who next win that office.<\/p>\n Further, with a country that is more or less divided between Red and Blue (i.e. Republicans and Democrats) and an electoral map Gerrymandered to ensure a Republican House and Democratic Senate at least through the 2020 census, help is not on the way.\u00a0 Nor is the hostility and animosity that persists between both parties likely to dissipate and indeed will almost certainly worsen as ideologically driven sound bites attacking the other side continue to substitute for reason and judgment.<\/p>\n Several pieces of good news brighten this otherwise bleak picture.\u00a0 A combination of the potential breakthrough in disposal of Syrian chemical weapons leading to broader negotiations with Iran and possibly on the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflicts cannot be discounted.\u00a0 Even though President Barack Obama cancelled his trip to Asia and assigned Secretary of State John Kerry the heavy lifting, the Trans-Pacific as well as Trans-Atlantic trade and investment partnerships could be game changers.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the other side of the ledger is grim.\u00a0 Without a healthy economy, for most Americans, standards of living will decline.\u00a0 Expectations about future generations living better than today\u2019s will be whimsy.\u00a0 And barring a miracle, Washington will not tend to the nation\u2019s business in serious and productive ways.<\/p>\n America has faced far worse crises and conditions. In 1776, defeat of the British superpower was far from assured.\u00a0 The Civil War, two world wars and a great depression were likewise existential.\u00a0 But the nation recovered and thrived.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n It is glib to say that America was lucky.\u00a0 However, geography, virtually unlimited resources and the prospect of individual success almost beyond comprehension empowered America and Americans.\u00a0 Today, when threats are far more diaphanous, government is more intrusive and complicated, and political gridlock prevents effective action, ironically, the well-being of Americans may never have been at greater risk—especially when that risk is not existential but individual and personal.<\/p>\n Were there simple solutions, they would have been taken long ago.\u00a0 And the Churchillian adage of muddling through after exhausting all other options may no longer work.\u00a0 So, Americans must either accept a darker future or demand that their government does its job. Perhaps an avalanche of emails, letters and phone calls will shock Congress and the White House into action.\u00a0 More likely, without a game changer such as the ones noted above or some very undeserved good luck, jokes and laws will continue to be intertwined and the humor of Will Rogers will be a eulogy to past greatness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The great American and Oklahoman humorist Will Rogers had a toxic view of Congress eighty or so years ago and long before Congress bashing became a contact sport for late night television hosts.\u00a0 \u201cEvery time Congress wanted to pass a law, it became a joke,\u201d Rogers quipped.\u00a0 \u201cAnd every time Congress wished to make a joke, they turned it into a law.\u201d Today, the U.S. government is worse than Rogers\u2019 bad joke. Failure to pass a budget is now standard operating procedure.\u00a0 Should the debt-ceiling limit be unreconciled by October 17th\u00a0and the nation defaults, the consequences are almost certainly going to be bad and grow worse the longer government is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,65,76,102,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americas","category-blog-en","category-harlan-ullman-en","category-issues","category-regions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2942"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2944,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942\/revisions\/2944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}