{"id":267180,"date":"2010-02-02T17:39:03","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T22:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.35225"},"modified":"2010-02-02T18:04:40","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T23:04:40","slug":"stop-calling-america-ungovernable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/267180","title":{"rendered":"Stop Calling America “Ungovernable”!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am generally impatient with the narratives of American decline.  I have been alive for thirty-odd years now, and it seems that for my entire adult life, the nation has been just on the brink of plunging over some abyss or the other.  That Japanese were going to buy the country lock, stock, and barrel.  Our manufacturing jobs were going to evaporate.  We were descending into the dark night of fascism<\/a>. The Chinese are going to steal all of our clean jobs.  Etc <\/p>\n

As I wrote in the post I linked, way back in 2004:<\/p>\n

\n

So after fifty years of sullenly expecting it, the doom everyone was
\nwaiting for has not only failed to come to pass–even the worry about
\nit has faded utterly. And we achieved this neither by defeating the
\nSoviet Union in battle, nor by unilaterally disarming, the two
\nsolutions that were most widely proposed as the only<\/i> thing that
\ncould save us from this disastrous fate (and the former only in the few
\nbrief years before Russia tested her first nuclear weapon).<\/p>\n

Why do I bring this up? Well, because the failure of one impending
\ndoom to come to pass has not stopped other prophets from pushing theirs.<\/p>\n

. . . . A few
\nweeks ago, I was talking to a libertarian who was arguing that the
\nPatriot Act was a one-way ticket to totalitarianism. We were violating
\nfundamental rights that had been enshrined in the constitution for 200
\nyears, and once we’d given them up, it was going to be a short step on
\nthe slippery slope to a police state. I share her fear of government
\nintrusiveness. But this a markedly ahistorical view of the constitution
\nand the liberties it allows us to enjoy, which is no more accurate for
\nits extreme prevalence in libertarian circles. There is no primal state
\nof liberty, created by the Constitution, from which we have slowly but
\ninexorably been moving away. Liberties have been granted, and taken
\naway, and granted again throughout the history of our country. Just off
\nthe top of my head: Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, the Palmer
\nraids, the detention of the west coast Japanese in camps during World
\nWar II, the committment of anyone FDR or one of his minion’s thought
\nwas especially dangerous to the war effort to St. Elizabeth’s mental
\nhospital during same, the McCarthy hearings–see this wonderful Richard Posner piece<\/a>
\nfor a more elegant exegisis of the history of American liberties. The
\nshape of liberty has changed over the 200 years of our existence,
\nexpanding in some places and contracting in others. There is no
\nlibertarian eden, located somewhere in the American past, from which we
\nare now fallen, or falling.<\/p>\n

Now, this doesn’t mean that the Patriot Act is a good thing. But the
\nfact that we have the Patriot Act now does not mean, as many
\nlibertarians ardently argue, that we will always have the Patriot Act.
\nIf the Patriot Act is bad, we should vigorously fight it. But there is
\nno need to construct doomsday scenarios in which the existance of the
\nPatriot Act consigns us to a totalitarian future. <\/p>\n

Not to dump on libertarians exclusively, because everyone seems to
\ndo it. Social conservatives think we’re doomed because the institution
\nof marriage has been dangerously undermined, and is therefore likely to
\ndisappear entirely, along with God, patriotism, and the super-sized big
\nmac meal, if we don’t do something, quick. A large number of wonkish
\ntypes (including, on odd days, me) spend a lot of time worrying about
\nthe possibility that our old-age entitlements will drive us into
\ndisastrous bankruptcy; few of us stop to reflect on the many, many
\nunsustainable economic trends that have worried policy wonks right up
\nuntil the moment that the impending doom suddenly solved itself under
\nthe inexorable logic of Herb Stein’s famous dictum: “If something can’t
\ngo on forever, it won’t.” Many liberals, like Paul Krugman, think that
\nwe nearly got into socioeconomic eden sometime around 1966, give or
\ntake, and have been staging a fast retreat towards armageddon ever
\nsince; marginal tax rates and some forms of social spending here take
\nthe part of doom-bringer, even though on every measure except simple
\ninequality, the lives of the poor and the middle class seem to be
\nricher in material goods, leisure, and quality of work than they were
\nin the Golden Era of America’s Middle Class.<\/p>\n

That’s not to say that liberals shouldn’t want more progressive
\ntaxes and social spending, policy wonks more sustainably structured
\nentitlements, social conservatives more traditional cultural values, or
\nlibertarians more freedom. It’s perfectly reasonable to look at the way
\nthings are and say “they could be so much better if . . . ” What we
\nshouldn’t do is compare our present to some highly airbrushed past, or
\nmindlessly extrapolate trends, and thereby hastily conclude that we’re
\nall going to hell in a handbasket.<\/p>\n

Madeline Albright spoke at my sister’s graduation last weekend, and
\nduring her speech she said something to the effect that the world
\nsituation now was scarier than it had been at any time since World War
\nII. This is a common belief — commoner among liberals, but not
\nexclusive to them. But huh?<\/i> Think of what the world looked like to
\nGeorge Orwell. Nazism defeated, but at terrible cost–and no one knew,
\nthen, that Fascism wouldn’t re-emerge. Russia, with Stalin still at its
\nhelm, devouring Eastern Europe. The most terrible weapon ever imagined
\nrecently used for the first time, and every nation with two scientists
\nto rub together working hard to develop their own, personal
\nholocaust-maker. The Cold War incipient in the battles over Berlin.
\nAnd, if you’re Orwell, a nasty case of tuberculosis, and no nice
\nantibiotics to cure it. Things were bleak<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Yet we made it through, with a modicum of liberty and a splash of
\nhuman kindness, and now democracy is springing up like mushrooms
\neverywhere you look, poverty is steadily decreasing, though perhaps not
\nas fast as we’d like, and wars are killing fewer and fewer humans each
\ndecade. The world is a pretty good place to live, and getting steadily
\nbetter for almost everyone. As flawed as the human race is, we seem to
\nbe a lot better than the doomsayers think at muddling through.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I stand by this.  Times are bad right now.  But they were bad in every
\nprevious decade, too, one way or another.  I’d say they’re worse than
\nusual, but that is a data point, not a trend.<\/p>\n

I
\nam particularly weary of the notion that the failure to pass a health
\ncare bill proves that the American government, and\/or the Republican
\nparty, has entered some unprecedentedly awful phase that have rendered
\nthe nation “ungovernable”.  This confuses passing your parochial policy
\npreferences with “governing”.  America is still being governed about as
\nwell as she ever has been, and if you think that this is not so, try
\ngoing somewhere like Somalia, or Haiti, which really doesn’t have a
\nfunctioning government.  <\/p>\n

I have a simple three-step test to indicate whether a country is “governable”:<\/p>\n

1. Is it having, about to have, or living in the aftermath of, a coup?
2. Has the civil war killed at least 1% of the population?
3. If
\nan alien landed and demanded to be taken to see a representative of
\nyour government, would you be unable to comply with this request?<\/p>\n

If
\nyour answer to any of these questions is “yes”, then you may be living
\nin a country that is ungovernable, and should consult the World Bank,
\nor an arms dealer, if the symptoms do not resolve within a week.<\/p>\n

Otherwise,
\nyou are living in a functional nation-state.  You may not like what the
\ngovernment does (or doesn’t do), but it is governable, and indeed, is
\nbeing governed right this very minute!<\/p>\n

It isn’t even true that
\nit has somehow become impossible to pass important legislation.  The
\ntwo most recent things that absolutely had to be passed
\nimmediately–the bank bailouts, and the stimulus–were.  Maybe they
\nwere bad ideas.  But it turns out that Congress can still pass bills,
\neven unpopular ones, if the matter is sufficiently urgent.<\/p>\n

I
\ndon’t find it particularly surprising that Democrats with a numerically
\nlarge but politically weak coalition found it difficult to persuade
\ntheir members to pass a politically unpopular bill in the face of an
\nelectorate that has made it clear it will un-elect anyone who thinks
\nthat they aren’t accountable to the voters. I certainly don’t view it
\nas evidence of catastrophic decline.<\/p>\n

Nor do I find it
\nparticularly surprising that Republicans with a numerically small, but
\npolitically fairly uniform coalition, find it easy to maintain party
\ndiscipline. It is not even the first time that such a thing has
\nhappened. The Democrats maintained just such party discipline during
\nSocial Security reform, with similar results.<\/p>\n

Maybe the
\nRepublicans are really taking obstructionism to some unprecedented new
\nlevel, but you can’t prove it by health care reform.  <\/p>\n

The fact
\nis, Republicans maintained party discipline in the face of some pretty
\nstrong Democratic party discipline.  Democrats love to describe
\nthemselves as “open to compromise”, but what they mean by this is that
\nif they could have gotten the Republicans to sign onto this vast new
\nedifice to which the GOP (and their base) was radically opposed,
\nDemocrats would have been willing to make some trivial tweak like
\nadding a weak tort reform position.  Would Democrats have signed onto
\nsocial security privatisation, if Republicans had been willing to do
\nEFCA in exchange?  <\/p>\n

Some things just aren’t open to
\ncompromise.  A compromise bill would have looked like something else
\nentirely–more like Medicare Part D. It wouldn’t have been “HCR 1.01”.<\/p>\n

Moreover,
\nRepublicans maintained this discipline in the face of the bill’s
\ngrowing unpopularity–just as Democrats did with Social Security
\nreform.  If the public had displayed strong majorities in favor, some
\nGOP members would have defected, just as some Democrats would probably
\nhave reluctantly gone along with Social Security reform if the GOP had
\nkept its favorables above 50%.  <\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong:  I think that the American government doesn’t work that well, for reasons well described by Jonathan Rauch<\/a>. 
\nIt does many things that I don’t like, and the ones that I do like, it
\nmostly does in some grotesquely inefficient manner.  But that’s not
\nnew.  Is it really novel, nor surprising, to find that even parties
\nwith large majorities find it difficult to pass very unpopular bills on
\nstraight party-line votes?<\/p>\n

In the near future, I expect Obama to
\nfocus more on popular measures that Republicans will have a hard time
\nopposing, and unsurprisingly, these measures will face less
\nopposition.  We will continue to muddle along.  Neither our government,
\nnor our country, will be close to perfect.  But you need only read some
\nhistory, or travel in the third world, to realize that imperfect as
\nthey are, things will still be really damn good.

\n

\n Email this Article<\/a>
\n Add to digg<\/a>
\n Add to Reddit<\/a>
\n Add to Twitter<\/a>
\n Add to del.icio.us<\/a>
\n Add to StumbleUpon<\/a>
\n Add to Facebook<\/a>
\n

\n\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am generally impatient with the narratives of American decline.  I have been alive for thirty-odd years now, and it seems that for my entire adult life, the nation has been just on the brink of plunging over some abyss or the other.  That Japanese were going to buy the country lock, stock, and barrel.  […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}