{"id":7263,"date":"2011-11-20T14:39:27","date_gmt":"2011-11-20T13:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7263"},"modified":"2011-11-20T15:18:09","modified_gmt":"2011-11-20T14:18:09","slug":"why-is-americas-political-system-so-dysfunctional-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7263","title":{"rendered":"Why is America&#8217;s political system so dysfunctional? (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just over a week ago, I did <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7111\">a posting<\/a> about why I thought the United States political system was broken. I invited comments, expected some, and received none.<\/p>\n<p>Well, in the past week, the US Congress took a decision that highlighted the absurdity and sadness of the present political impasse. It decided that the tomato sauce used to make pizzas is a vegetable which it manifestly is not. The point is that it can make a decision on this matter &#8211; following heavy lobbying &#8211; but it cannot agree a deficit reduction programme or a reform of the healthcare system.<\/p>\n<p>In an interesting article in today&#8217;s &#8220;Observer&#8221; newspaper, the judgment and the analysis in my earlier posting are confirmed. The piece refers to <em>&#8220;a growing perception that\u00a0US politics has become dangerously dysfunctional&#8221;<\/em> (just the word I used).<\/p>\n<p>The reasons are many but dominating factors are too many elections and too much money on elections and lobbying. The article states:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The influence of money and the development of a &#8220;permanent campaign&#8221; mentality have gone hand-in-hand. As campaigns stretched out, they required more money. It has to come from somewhere, and so in recent years the lobbying industry has ballooned. Nor is that money free. Special interests, whether a big oil company or union (or even a frozen pizza-maker) expect a return on their investment. The figures alone tell the story. In 2010 lobbyists spent $3.5bn on their activities, up from $1.4bn in 1998.\u00a0In the same year there were almost 13,000 official lobbyists in the capital, and thousands more unregistered.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In my posting, i highlighted the US Constitution as a major cause of the dysfunctionality of the American political system. To reduce the number of elections and to curb the money spent on them &#8211; not to mention some renegotation of the complex system of check and balances &#8211; all require constitutional change and in practice the Constitution is almost unchallengeable. The &#8220;Observer&#8221; piece puts it this way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;America&#8217;s system of governance, designed by the founding fathers and then jiggled around with since, suddenly seems ill-equipped to deal with the nation&#8217;s problems. The checks and balances built into the constitution appear gridlocked, rather than promoting sensible governance. Nor is it just ordinary people who feel this way. America&#8217;s inability to get important things done has a global impact. This summer, when ratings agency Standard &amp; Poor&#8217;s handed out a first ever downgrade to the world superpower, it was clear why. &#8220;The downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges,&#8221; the agency said.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can read the full article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2011\/nov\/20\/paralysis-in-us-politics-extremism\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I would still welcome comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just over a week ago, I did a posting about why I thought the United States political system was broken. I invited comments, expected some, and received none. Well, in the past week, the US Congress took a decision that highlighted the absurdity and sadness of the present political impasse. It decided that the tomato [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7263"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7274,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7263\/revisions\/7274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}