I just read this article by Peter Beinart, a associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. His book The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris will be published by Harper in June, in the latest Time magazine.
He discusses the revulsion toward the nation's capital and when government doesn't take action, it loses people's faith. And without public faith, government action is harder still. Call it Washington's vicious circle.
Breaking this circle of public mistrust and government failure requires progress on solving big problems, which requires more cooperation between the parties. But before we can begin to break that circle, we need to understand how it developed in the first place.
At the end of the article he makes three points about possible changes to untie the knots. He must have been reading the independent movements desire for structural political reform.
First, more New Hampshires. Since the 1970s, Iowa and New Hampshire have held the first two presidential nominating contests. Iowa is a caucus, which means that only a small — and ideologically extreme — fraction of the state's voters take part. New Hampshire, by contrast, is an open primary, which encourages candidates to appeal to voters outside their party. If every state took New Hampshire's example to heart — and allowed independents to vote not only in presidential primaries but in congressional ones as well — the consequences could be profound. Not only would more moderate candidates win, but the same candidates would stake out more-moderate positions, the result of which might be something of a bipartisan rebirth.
Second, more Crossfires. In today's highly segmented, partisan news environment, it's hard to create big new media institutions dedicated to objective news reporting. But it might be possible to create new talk shows and blogs in which liberals and conservatives interrogate one another's views — programs like the early (and more substantive) incarnation of CNN's Crossfire or William F. Buckley's Firing Line. There's no guarantee that the conversation would be edifying, of course. But it would be a useful antidote to the current cable and blog ghettos, where you can go years without hearing the other side make its case. The recent televised meeting between Obama and the House Republican leadership was a reminder that honest but civil debate can show people that their side isn't infallible and that not everyone on the other side is evil and foolish. Add to this is Open Debates.
Third, Imagine if another powerful third-party voice were to emerge today, demanding that both parties take real steps to solve problems like global warming and health care — as opposed to the Tea Partyers, who insist that government just get out of the way. Republicans would still disagree profoundly with the Obama Administration's favored remedies, but they would feel greater pressure to amend rather than kill them. Independent candidates would create a countervailing pressure against those partisan zealots who are constantly threatening to punish Republicans for giving the White House an inch.
Use the above link to read the entire article.
Michael H. Drucker
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