Whats wrong with the government - a debate

I heard a great debate last night on whether the two-party system is making America ungovernable.  The debaters were Arianna Huffington (liberal) and David Brooks (conservative) saying that it is a problem and P.J. O’Rourke (a conservative libertarian) and Zev Chafets  (a reporter from Israel, which currently has 14 parties) saying it is a good system.

Arianna Huffington had a point that I had never thought of before but that I found very intriguing.  She said that social media has given younger people political outlets that are separated from the operation of government.  So the energy and ideas that young people usually bring in to energize political parties is now energizing flash mobs and Facebook groups.  So the parties are being run by old fogies who are set in their ways.  Grover Norquist gets all the GOP nominees to sign the no tax increase pledge and democrats are beholden to old interests in big labor.  I have enough to say about these trends for another blog post later.  But the consequence of this is that only the established interests and lobbies have any power in DC anymore and they have co-opted the legislative and regulatory processes. 

David Brooks said that the problem with our system is that a politician’s party and values have become more important than governing.  So pols are unwilling to compromise at all and things have totally broken down.  He reminisced for the days when we had third parties bubbling up any time a major party broke down.  After all, the first two parties were the Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans.  These have little resemblance to the Obama/Pelosi/Reid Democrats or Romney/Boehner/McConnell Republicans.  And the Tea Party hardly counts as a third party.  He hopes for moderate independents to save the day.  He wants a middle-of-the-road coalition of blue dog democrats and moderate republicans to create a new party.  Maybe a permanent gang of six that turns into a gang of 20 or 30. 

PJ O’Rourke took the other side.  He said that we don’t really have a two party system, we have two different sources of fundraising.  To get elected, politicians still need to pander to the electorate just like they would if there were no parties or three parties. 

Seth Chavitz had a great perspective because of the challenges Israel has in governing through coalition.  There are so many problems with having 14 parties that 2 would be a blessing.  His basic message is that American democracy sucks, except compared to all of the other systems that are out there.  As someone who has followed Israeli politics for about 20 years, I have a hard time arguing with this line of reasoning.

An interesting question from the audience suggested that the problem was the size of government.  In Canada, there is one member of parliament for each 80,000 people.  In the U.S. it is one representative for 800,000 people – ten times as many.  But the panelists thought that having more reps would not be an improvement.  Should we break up into multiple countries and become the European Union?

Another audience question was about the speed of government.  Which is better, to have a political system that moves quickly (and perhaps too quickly) or one that moves slowly (and perhaps too slowly).  In most cases, too slow is better.  But it seems lately that we are making decisions that are good in the short term (the next election cycle) but bad in the long term (when many members will be out of Congress anyway).  This is perhaps the bigger problem than too fast or too slow.  Our system is too focused on short term solutions.

For another blog on this debate from someone who probably listened more carefully than I did, check this out.