"Crowded politics" or, why healthcare will probably fail, as will...

[TreasonousBastard]

other good, and bad, ideas- we share the fault with the obstructionists.

<...>
"Although the features of Clinton's health care reform and Bush's Social Security reform were quite different, I believe they failed for the same reason: crowded politics. In both cases, the overwhelmingly number of groups and individuals interested in the issue created a paralysis, ultimately leading to the reform's downfall.

Gone are the days when policy design was negotiated and controlled through small Iron Triangles consisting of the relevant executive agency, the congressional committees of jurisdiction, and at most a handful of interest groups. Since the 1970s, the number of associations has more than doubled, the number of lobbyists has quadrupled, and the number of think tanks has grown six fold.1 Meanwhile, academics, politicians, and private citizens have become more interested and informed in a wider array of policy areas.

Many social scientists have noted that this growing number of actors could lead to policy stagnation. As early as 1979, Theodore Lowi warned that the permeation of interest groups intensified the status-quo bias in policy making. More recently, Jonathan Raunch has pointed to hyper-pluralism as a source of “Demosclerosis” – a disease of government in which interest “groups interact to produce collective stalemate”2

But insightful as they were, these authors failed to see the whole picture – pointing only to entrenched interests as a source of resistance. In reality, that paralysis is caused not only by interest groups, but also think tanks, experts, politicians, journalists, and government bodies; and not just by those defending current policies, but by disinterested experts and those on the side of reform as well."

<...>

The rest of the article is here:

http://hnn.us/articles/89465.html

[truedelphi]

1. Would we have an Emancipation Proclamation in this era?

Or would Obama say, "Hmm that is one good idea, that I would support, but we already have a system in place, so we have to work within that system."

It all boils down to leadership. You didn't see LBJ addressing the top segregationists at Town hall meetings right before the Civil Rights Act was about to be voted on.

So LBJ will always have the Civil Rights Act as part of his legacy. While Obama, unless he starts listening to people like Harken, Waters and Woolsey and Kucinich, will have only Corporate toady-ism as his.