US politics is angry, polarised, and gridlocked. Can it be reformed?

[Blue_Tires]

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say that Osama bin Laden was a Chinese agent. And maybe America's banks, credit card companies, advertising agencies and government have been secretly working for China too. For while the United States has spent more than $1 trillion on foreign wars since the 9/11 attacks, and piled up a Mount Everest of debt at home, China has spent the last decade quietly growing, saving, investing and rising. If the winner of the war in Iraq was Iran, the winner of America's decade-long struggle against violent Islamism may be China.

The good news is that America is waking up to its predicament. President Obama talks of the need for nation-building at home. Richard Haass, head of the Council on Foreign Relations and once a member of the Bush administration, reflects on "a decade of strategic distraction". A veteran Republican observes that the US is building more infrastructure in Afghanistan than in America. (The road surface of the interstate highways seems to get worse every year I come back.) Every second newspaper column now points up the contrast between China's high-speed intercity rail links and America's lack of them. Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski calls for a programme of "national renewal". Everyone acknowledges that performance in the lower half of America's school system is dismal.

And that's before we even mention the alarmingly sluggish recovery of the economy, the loss of jobs, the scale of the soaring deficits. Looking at the Congressional budget office's projections, Republican Senator John Ensign says that if they don't do something about it, "this country is going to become Greece, except we don't have the European Union to bail us out". One of the country's most senior military figures was asked, not so long ago, what he considered to be the greatest single national security threat to the US. His answer: our national debt.

This does not mean that the danger from Islamist terrorists, or a nuclear-threshold Iran sparking a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, or the festering sore of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are not real or important. They are. But if you ask what will be the biggest geopolitical story of the 2010s, my best guess is "rising China and struggling America". Where that competition has got to by 2020 will depend crucially on America's ability to put its house in order. Physician, heal thyself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/sep/29/american-politics-gridlocked-competition-china

[niceypoo]

1. No

The GOP is intentionally collapsing the economy. They believe if they collapse it completely, social programs will collapse with it.

The situation will get worse, and worse, and worse as long as the GOP exists as a viable party.

[KansDem]

2. Correction: "Republican politics is angry, polarized, and gridlocked."

I don't seem to recall the Democrats whining, pouting, shouting, screaming, and screeching their demands. Ever since Newt Gingrich proclaimed "we will cooperate, but not compromise," we have had a right-wing party ready to shut down government at the orders of the corporate benefactors (incidentally, Newt, "compromise" is the foundation of a democracy).

We have seen a line of stupid, really stupid, candidates from the Republicans, starting with Ronald Reagan and including Dan Quayle and George W. Bush, and culminating with this election's "heavy hitters:" Palin, Paul, O'Donnell, Angle, etc.

And we have seen lying the likes we've never seen before, from both the GOP and their enablers in the media (FOX News comes to mind). Say what you will about the "liberal" CBS News with Walter Cronkite (I grew up with these two), but I've never seen the number of "apologies" that I've witnessed in recent years from FOX after being called out on an overly-edited story, or outright lie.

I suggest we (liberals, progressives, moderates, etc) threaten to strike: no more elections until we have a better opposition.

[cliffordu]

3. No. We are toast.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. Remember FDR? When Democrats deliver results...

Republicans are destroyed and the crazy-right goes home.

After the mid-term elections two years after FDR's inaugural, only 17 Republicans remained in the Senate!

[Jefferson23]

5. US politics can be reformed, public funded elections. The money, it's all about the damn money. n/t