TW: The premise of Zakaria's piece is old: democracies move slowly until a crisis forces their hand. 9/11, Pearl Harbor, GD 1.0, JFK's assassination etc. created environments of real bi-partisanship in which for better or worse our government made big moves. The challenge is not all governmental challenges occur around hot burning crises. Many are slow burns- climate change, fiscal deficits, improving education, investing in infrastructure, addressing poverty and income disparities etc.
Our government reflecting the will of entrenched, powerful interests and a passive, ill-informed populace refuses to make challenging choices. Crisis mitigates the power of those entrenched interests and awakens the passive.
The challenges we face are not insurmountable they merely require trade-offs and some level of sacrifice, a level of sacrifice which would likely surprise many by its relative ease.
American democracy has worked fairly effectively to harness its competing interests as its demographic and material resources were waxing. As these resources wax relatively speaking will the vaunted American democracy be up for the challenge? Our fiscal deficits are causing America great harm. They are sapping our competitive strength in a drip, drip, drip manner punctuated by the occasional belch like last Fall. We can neither tax our way out of them nor wish them away with fantasies like supply side economics. Some cuts are needed but where are the folks pounding the table for that?
From Fareed Zakaria at Newsweek:
"...There is something about America—the system, the government, the people—that allows us to react to a crisis with astonishing speed.
...Now, to see the weakness of the American system, consider the past week or two and the debacle of the health-care debate. It is demonstrably clear that the U.S. health-care system is on an unsustainable path. If current trends continue—and there is no indication that they won't—health care will consume 40 percent of the national economy by 2050. The problem is that this is a slow and steady decline, producing no crisis, no Pearl Harbor, no 9/11. As a result, we seem incapable of grappling with it seriously.
It's not as if the problems aren't apparent to everyone, whatever your political persuasion. Costs are rising so fast that every day, more than 10,000 Americans lose their insurance coverage. In 1993, 61 percent of small businesses provided health insurance for their employees. Now that number is down to 38 percent. Larger firms face greater and greater health-care costs. And yet, Americans do worse on almost every health measure than most advanced industrial countries, which spend about half as much on health care per person and have proportionately more elderly people.
The political debate that is taking place is unreal...The lack of serious discussion is a tragedy,
....Health care is the nation's most serious long-term problem. But think of Social Security, government pension liabilities, state--government deficits, and energy dependence, and you face the same issue. Each one of these problems is getting worse by the day, and yet the political system seems unable to take them on and make major reforms. On these very important issues, America is caught in a downward spiral. It makes you wish for a crisis."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/212163
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