How do Americans think the long-running Gridlock Show in Washington will end?
Some of the possibilities are frightening. Demagogues, rioters, revolutionaries — history teaches that persistent government dysfunction brings that lot to the fore, with undesirable results.
Continuing to kick the can down the road on the national debt, climate change, deteriorating infrastructure, the education achievement gap, pension underfunding, rising student debt, et al., doesn't seem like a good option, either. At some point, the nation will discover that the road that can is bumping along leads to national decline.
The possibility worth wishing for is that Americans will figure out how to make better use of the control levers they constitutionally hold, and steer the ship of state into motion. America's alienated apoliticos, disgusted pragmatists and people-without-a-party moderates will find each other and turn themselves into a political force potent enough to compel politicians to compromise.
The odds are very long against such a groundswell developing, let alone being effective. Campaign finance and redistricting laws are stacked high against it. That was the tough talk I tossed last week at a contingent of Minnesotans involved in No Labels, a three-year-old national, bipartisan citizens movement that its website says is "dedicated to promoting a new politics of problem solving."
They countered with a challenge that shushed my cynicism: "If not this, what?"
What indeed? Won't pressure best come from the grass roots, with social media and e-networking connecting people who are willing to do more than grouse about unyielding partisanship? Won't it most plausibly come from outside the political parties, but ideally still be respectful enough of the two-party system to seek to perfect it, not overthrow it?
That's No Labels' approach. It arose in 2010 in response to Obamacare — not the policy so much as the fact that it was launched without a single GOP vote in its favor. That's not the way that major policies should be set in a two-party country, No Labels argued. (Agreed, I said. But chances are good that if Democrats had delayed reform until they could round up GOP votes, they'd still be waiting.)
