04:55 pm
What He Said
Ezra Klein nails the current crisis. It’s not just economic, it’s political.
Above all, though, this is a failure of politics. Like with global warming, with health care, with the national debt, with immigration. It is further proof that we have a calcified political system incapable of responding to either long-term threats or short-term crises. The electoral and partisan incentives have made actual action too dangerous and rendered obstruction everyone’s easy second choice. And in politics, you just about never get your first choice. And so the Republicans killed this bill. Without their cover, the Democrats couldn’t save it, because politically, they couldn’t take ownership of it.
It’s easy enough to imagine a society running atop a stable economy even when it has an unhealthy politics. And it’s simple enough to see how an unstable economy can be calmed through concerted action by an effective political structure. But an economy in chaos and a political system in paralysis? What happens then?
What happens then, Ezra, is stalemate, crisis, disaster. We’re entering territory we’ve only seen twice before in American history: 1859-1861, the greatest political crisis this country has ever seen, and 1929-1932, the greatest economic crisis this country has ever seen.
The only question is whether the next President can do what Lincoln and Roosevelt did: provide the leadership necessary to end the crisis and get the United States back on track.
And which of our two current candidates does anyone seriously think can do that?