Podesta Says "US System Sucks" Economist Blames Obama

The Economist makes an excellent analysis of why Mr. Podesta could make such a thoughtless statement and still utter a third or quarter truth. After noting how many bills await passing, the mag says:

This, argue the critics, is what happens when a mere 41 senators (in a 100-strong chamber) can filibuster a bill to death; when states like Wyoming (population: 500,000) have the same clout in the Senate as California (37m), so that senators representing less than 11% of the population can block bills; when, thanks to gerrymandering, many congressional seats are immune from competitive elections; when hateful bloggers and talk-radio hosts shoot down any hint of compromise; when a tide of lobbying cash corrupts everything. And this dysfunctionality matters far beyond America’s shores. A few years ago only Chinese bureaucrats dared suggest that Beijing’s autocratic system of government was superior. Nowadays there is no shortage of leaders from emerging countries, or even prominent American businesspeople, who privately sing the praises of a system that can make decisions swiftly.

Wisely, the problem is approached slantwise:

A criticism with more weight is that American government is good at solving acute problems (like averting a Depression) but less good at confronting chronic ones (like the burden of entitlements). Yet even this can be overstated. Mr Bush failed to reform pensions, but he did push through No Child Left Behind, the biggest change to schools for a generation. Bill Clinton reformed welfare. The system, in other words, can work, even if it does not always do so. (That is hardly unusual anywhere: for all its speed in authorising power stations, China has hardly made a success of health care lately.) On the biggest worry of all, the budget, it may well take a crisis to force action, but Americans have wrestled down huge deficits before.

Indeed, the Founders might consider the Constitution designed by Madison at the moment as performing according to specs:

America’s political structure was designed to make legislation at the federal level difficult, not easy. Its founders believed that a country the size of America is best governed locally, not nationally. True to this picture, several states have pushed forward with health-care reform. The Senate, much ridiculed for antique practices like the filibuster and the cloture vote, was expressly designed as a “cooling” chamber, where bills might indeed die unless they commanded broad support.

What America is confronting at the moment is a slight case of the hiccups:

Broad support from the voters is something that both the health bill and the cap-and-trade bill clearly lack. Democrats could have a health bill tomorrow if the House passed the Senate version. Mr Obama could pass a lot of green regulation by executive order. It is not so much that America is ungovernable, as that Mr Obama has done a lousy job of winning over Republicans and independents to the causes he favours. If, instead of handing over health care to his party’s left wing, he had lived up to his promise to be a bipartisan president and courted conservatives by offering, say, reform of the tort system, he might have got health care through; by giving ground on nuclear power, he may now stand a chance of getting a climate bill. Once Mr Clinton learned the advantages of co-operating with the Republicans, the country was governed better.

And another part of the clunky performance problems might lie in the "safe seat" system, not too far off from the "Rotten Boroughs" of the early 18th century:

So the basic system works; but that is no excuse for ignoring areas where it could be reformed. In the House the main outrage is gerrymandering. Tortuously shaped “safe” Republican and Democratic seats mean that the real battles are fought among party activists for their party’s nomination. This leads candidates to pander to extremes, and lessens the chances of bipartisan co-operation. An independent commission, already in existence in some states, would take out much of the sting. In the Senate the filibuster is used too often, in part because it is too easy. Senators who want to talk out a bill ought to be obliged to do just that, not rely on a simple procedural vote: voters could then see exactly who was obstructing what.

These defects and others should be corrected. But even if they are not, they do not add up to a system that is as broken as people now claim. American democracy has its peaks and troughs; attempts to reform it dramatically, such as California’s initiative craze, have a mixed history, to put it mildly. Rather than regretting how the Republicans in Congress have behaved, Mr Obama should look harder at his own use of his presidential power.

Tantrum time is over, and it is evident that the Dem wish list is still far from being accepted by more than a fraction of the American electorate. And the hysterics ginned up by the LameStream Media and HatefulBloggers won't be able to keep the American people's eyes off the ball for long.

Obama has been given a free ride on sliding on or skating past his promises, including much needed transparency which he promised during the election in '08 & has reneged on completely. Perhaps liberals have forgotten these promises, but the bulk of the Electorate, the 80% who are not die-hard statist socialists, certainly have not and thank God in the USA we still have a functioning election system, gerrymandered and unbalanced as it might be.