Is America Governable?

Tom Friedman called up Frank Fukuyama to discuss the gridlock in US politics. This op-ed is his summary of their conversation. The US political system was designed with a system of checks and balances that made it difficult for power in government to be concentrated in any political party. That system works as long as there is enough agreement between the two dominant parties to permit government to govern. As we know, that system is no longer functional, and the problems that it presents do not auger well for the future of America. We have a system in which special interest groups finance the political campaigns and write many of our laws.

Fukuyama has some ideas about changes that should be made that might facilitate governance. The question is whether change is possible. Their discussion assumes that the two parties are equally responsible for the increase that we see in partisanship. My own view, is that one of our parties does not like to share power. It wants to move the country in radical new directions, and it no longer recognizes the legitimacy of the other political party, or its elected officials. It would prefer to capture government totally, and govern the country as a single party. Much of what it does is designed to convince the public that the other political party is not really American, and that it has an agenda for radical change in our society. To test that hypothesis, I suggest that we take a close look at the Mitt Romney of the past, and the policies of his father, George Romney, and compare that with the Mitt Romney that we see today. That comparison will demonstrate the radical changes that have taken place in one of our political parties. If we do something similar and compare President Obama's policies with those of the last democratic administration, we do not see radical changes in policy. On the other hand, Obama's proposal to restore the Clinton tax rates, is described as class warfare, and his effort to make less drastic reforms to healthcare policy than the Clinton administration is described as socialism.

My point is that until we realize that the current Republican Party is not the Republican Party of the past, and that it has the radical agenda for changing our society, we will not be able to make our country more governable. They would like nothing less than a single party system, in which the other party's function is to play the role of the devil that energizes the faithful in the other party.