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[Ya-ta Boy]

James Fallows has a terrific piece about 'How America Can Rise Again' full of optimistic views: "How should we feel? I spoke with historians and politicians, soldiers and ministers, civil engineers and broadcast executives and high-tech researchers. Overall, the news they gave was heartening�and alarming, too. Most of the things that worry Americans aren�t really that serious, especially those that involve �falling behind� anyone else." But his concluding section about government is much more pessimistic:

"I started out this process uncertain; I ended up convinced. America the society is in fine shape! America the polity most certainly is not. Over the past half century, both parties have helped cause this predicament�Democrats by unintentionally giving governmental efforts a bad name in the 1960s and �70s, Republicans by deliberately doing so from the Reagan era onward. At the moment, Republicans are objectively the more nihilistic, equating public anger with the sentiment that �their� America has been taken away and defining both political and substantive success as stopping the administration�s plans. As a partisan tactic, this could make sense; for the country, it�s one more sign of dysfunction, and of the near-impossibility of addressing problems that require truly public efforts to solve. Part of the mind-set of pre-Communist China was the rage and frustration of a great people let down by feckless rulers. Whatever is wrong with today�s Communist leadership, it is widely seen as pulling the country nearer to its full potential rather than pushing it away. America is not going to have a Communist revolution nor endure �100 Years of Humiliation,� as Imperial China did. But we could use more anger about the fact that the gap between our potential and our reality is opening up, not closing.
What are the choices? Logically they come down to these, starting with the most fanciful:

*We could hope for an enlightened military coup, or some other deus ex machina by the right kind of tyrants.

*We could hope to change the basic nature of our democracy, so it fits the times as our other institutions do�In principle, the United States could call for a new constitutional convention, to reconsider all the rules.

*We might hope for another Sputnik moment�to be precise, an event frightening enough to stimulate national action without posing a real threat. That kind of �hope� hardly constitutes a plan.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/american-decline

Andrew Sullivan followed that up with this: 'Barack Obama locked in dirty war with the right', focusing on the current political scene.

"Obama�s promise was that he would try to end this culture war. My view is that � to great dismay among his own partisan base � he has largely fulfilled that promise. He went to dinner with conservative journalists before he schmoozed the liberal ones; he spent more time on Capitol Hill with Republicans in his first few months than Bush ever had; he asked the evangelical Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration; he avoided abortion and gay rights issues; he refused to investigate, let alone prosecute, the war crimes of his predecessor; and he has ramped up the war in Afghanistan. He has cut taxes and refused to nationalise the banks.

But for all this, he is the target of almost relentless and extreme opposition, painting him as the most radical and extremist anti-American ever in the Oval Office. And with a Senate that requires a 60-40 majority to get anything done, that makes his promises very hard to keep. When Europeans wonder if America is ungovernable, this polarisation is the critical thing to keep in mind. Obama�s gamble is therefore to outlast this reaction, to refuse to take the bait for total political warfare at home, and to enact as much as he can as quickly as he can in case the natural upswing of an opposition in a depressed economy renders his congressional majority moot by next November."

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/01/ungovernable.html#more

Like Fallows mentioned, there was an opportunity right after 9/11 when the country was united, for ambitious national reform and renewal-- investment in infrastructure, renewable energy and entitlement program reform under conservative leadership.

Now it's the liberals' turn, but they are being stymied by the structure of the political system, notably the unrepresentative Senate.

Conservatives are infected by an anti-government allergy. Is it time for the liberals to give up on government as well? When the whole political class is disaffected then there is the possibility of overthrowing the whole thing. In short, is it time to scrap the Constitution?

[Kuros]

Scrap the Constitution? How about a revision, Ya-Ta? I mean, jeez, scrap the Constitution?

The biggest problem we have isn't even in the Constitution, and that's the Senate filibuster/cloture rule.

And we could abolish the House of Lords, er, the Senate with a Constitutional amendment.

[CentralCali]

[caniff]

[Moldy Rutabaga]

Interesting article and issues.

One option which wasn't listed, and which I think is more probable, is that state and local governments will begin to become more powerful to compensate for the power paralysis in Washington. I was shocked a few years ago to read that Schwarzenegger was treated more importantly by the Chinese than W. Bush was while on a visit (because he might beat everyone up or use a laser machine gun?). On many issues such as health care and going green, as well as conservative issues, many states have given up on Washington and enacted local legislation.

If we extrapolate into the future, one possibility which I think is strong is a much less decentralized North America, with perhaps economic and political zones of cooperation, with only a federal defense and currency and limited roles otherwise. Something to think about.

[Fox]

[CentralCali]

Anyone who thinks the US Senate is the US House of Lords is quite mistaken. And there's still plenty of debate about the merits or lack thereof for filibusters.

[Old Gil]

[Moldy Rutabaga]

Another possible argument for states assuming some of the federal government's role is that modifications to the constitution would also have to be debated and passed by congress and the senate. Amendments to stop the gridlock would have to be passed by... gridlocked bodies. These sorts of constitutional changes would be unlikely if even small bills can't reach consensus from both parties.

[Fox]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Kuros]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[VanIslander]

[Ya-ta Boy]