Words.
"...Look around. Our leaders now act as if the highest achievement we can expect from self-government is to avert calamity. Once upon a time Americans could come together through government and create universal public education, build interstate highways, bring security to old age through Social Security and Medicare, and nurture the most dynamic economy on Earth.
In our spare time government even corralled the best minds in the public and private sectors to put a man on the moon.
Today, by contrast, our leaders pop the champagne corks when they avoid a government shutdown. One day soon, if the president’s little Thursday pow-wow at the White House has its intended effect, we’ll be treated to a news conference at which our leaders congratulate themselves for raising the debt limit, thus avoiding what would have been an entirely self-inflicted economic catastrophe.
When relief masquerades as accomplishment, you know we’ve defined democracy down.
...It’s a sad mark of the times to have to point this out, but “averting calamity” doesn’t suffice as governing strategy. It’s not what more effective public sectors in places such as Singapore or Finland, or even China, are doing.
Which raises the question: Why have we defined democracy down? Why the shrunken sense of collective possibilities?
...Why do we have a nominating process that leaves moderates such as Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman pandering to a few hundred thousand conservative voters in idiosyncratic states? How can that make sense in the Internet age?
How can we expect to make progress when two years of every four are consumed by presidential campaigns?
How can anyone govern during those two years when a relic like the Senate filibuster guarantees that, even when a majority is elected, it can’t rule?
No wonder averting calamity becomes the modern measure of success..."
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