On the bottom
Anne Applebaum points out that however good US technology may be, its political system is backward and primitive and thus renders the technology far less useful than it could be.
[N]o officials from the Chinese Communist Party instructed anyone in the United States not to carry out testing. Nobody prevented American public officials from ordering the immediate production of a massive number of tests. Nevertheless, they did not. We don’t know all the details yet, but one element of the situation cannot be denied: The president himself did not want the disease talked of too widely, did not want knowledge of it to spread, and, above all, did not want the numbers of those infected to appear too high. He said so himself, while explaining why he didn’t want a cruise ship full of infected Americans to dock in California. “I like the numbers being where they are,” he said. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”
We could have gone all-in on testing weeks ago, but we didn’t because we have a childish self-dealing incompetent in charge. That’s not some weird fluke, it’s a product of the political system we have. Technology might as well not exist if someone like Donald Trump can prevent us from using it when it’s needed.
Without the threats and violence of the Chinese system, in other words, we have the same results: scientists not allowed to do their job; public-health officials not pushing for aggressive testing; preparedness delayed, all because too many people feared that it might damage the political prospects of the leader. I am not writing this in order to praise Chinese communism—far from it. I am writing this so that Americans understand that our government is producing some of the same outcomes as Chinese communism. This means that our political system is in far, far worse shape than we have hitherto understood.
Like…our political system is on a ventilator and probably won’t survive.
What if it turns out, as it almost certainly will, that other nations are far better than we are at coping with this kind of catastrophe? Look at Singapore, which immediately created an app that could physically track everyone who was quarantined, and that energetically tracked down all the contacts of everyone identified to have the disease. Look at South Korea, with its proven testing ability. Look at Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel managed to speak honestly and openly about the disease—she predicted that 70 percent of Germans would get it—and yet did not crash the markets.
The United States, long accustomed to thinking of itself as the best, most efficient, and most technologically advanced society in the world, is about to be proved an unclothed emperor. When human life is in peril, we are not as good as Singapore, as South Korea, as Germany. And the problem is not that we are behind technologically, as the Japanese were in 1853. The problem is that American bureaucracies, and the antiquated, hidebound, unloved federal government of which they are part, are no longer up to the job of coping with the kinds of challenges that face us in the 21st century. Global pandemics, cyberwarfare, information warfare—these are threats that require highly motivated, highly educated bureaucrats; a national health-care system that covers the entire population; public schools that train students to think both deeply and flexibly; and much more.
We don’t have any of that, because too few of us believe in it and because we have a voting system ever more weighted toward the people who don’t believe in it. We don’t believe in educated bureaucrats and universal health insurance and good public schools; we believe in money and profits and ruthless greedy “success.”
[Apologies if I’ve said this here before; I’ve talked about this idea, but I don’t think it was here. Also, I’m not a political scientist or historian, just a blowhard on the net.] One thing that’s occurred to me recently is that the system of government set up by the US constitution was reactionary, in that it essentially created an old-fashioned monarchy. When the constitution was written, Britain had been moving away from that system for about a century and a half, effectively removing the monarch’s power (helped along by a series of German monarchs who didn’t really care much about what was happening in Britain). By the time of the revolution, Parliament was effectively in charge of government (though the monarch remained as head of state), and the first iteration of the US government was essentially a pale imitation of the parliamentary system, albeit without effective enforcement powers. That didn’t work, and so in reaction Madison et al. went back to the only other system they knew, one with a strong executive (similar to the Royal Governors that tried to rule the colonies).
So now we’re stuck with a system that puts far too much power in one person’s hands, without an easy way to get rid of that person between elections. Meanwhile, most industrialized democracies have modeled themselves more or less on the British model*, with a mostly ceremonial head of state (monarch or president), and a parliament that has most of the effective power, but with a leader that can be replaced at any time.
The US model can be beneficial with an effective and ethical president, but it’s too easily subject to hijacking by an idiot or an authoritarian. And of course Trump is both.
*As far as I can tell, France is somewhere between the two models.
@Maroon – yes, in a parliamentary democracy you can’t imagine any Prime Minister being allowed to get away with so much craziness and ineptitude. Eventually MPs would vote them down.
Also this insane business of primaries, which means that (a) politicians spend most of their time electioneering; (b) you don’t have the next leader with a record as leader of the opposition.
KBPlayer,
Yeah, the whole primary system is one of those unplanned, historical messes that ends up with horrible consequences.
I suppose the silver lining is that Biden is a known quantity, and he knows how government is supposed to work. (On the other hand, Biden? Really? He’s better than some of the alternatives we had, but is that the best we can do?)
The problem is that American bureaucracies, and the antiquated, hidebound, unloved federal government of which they are part, are no longer up to the job of coping with the kinds of challenges that face us in the 21st century.
It’s not the civil service that’s the problem, it’s Trump.
What a Maroon, the Constitution did not set up a strong executive. They had a weak executive. Over the past century or so, the President has seized more power, and Congress has handed over a lot, including giving the President a discretionary budget that was never part of the package initially. They did not move back to a monarchy, or even take steps in that direction. The main powers were shared between the three branches, and one branch, Congress, had both legislative powers and the power of the purse.
iknklast,
Fair enough. I’m still honing my thoughts. Let me amend: the constitution set up a system that was, on the face, in balance, but had several features which would tend to lead to the president becoming more like a ruling monarch. First, the executive is the only branch in which all powers are concentrated in one person. Second, the first-past-the-post system encourages the rise of political parties. Third, in times of crisis (and especially war) the system encourages Congress to give powers to the president that can’t easily be taken away.
So you’re right, the presidency as written wasn’t terribly strong, but in retrospect it seems that it was set up to gain strength.
WaM, I think that is a fair assessment, but I don’t think that was on purpose. I think the framers of the Constitution may have been somewhat naive. As enlightenment thinkers, they assumed humans would behave rationally, and built the government along those lines. Of course, they also assumed mostly educated landowners and business men would be voting; they didn’t picture the idea of a universal franchise. Not that it would have made a difference, since that class is the class that elected Donald Trump. If we had gone by the universal franchise, and counted the popular vote as the winning vote, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.
I am sure the founders also didn’t foresee Twitter, and the power of social media to rally the worst among us. ;-)
@Iknlast – Benjamin Franklin would have been good at Twitter.
iknklast,
I agree that it wasn’t intentional. Madison et al. were worried about other evils (especially regionalism), and for all their supposed brilliance didn’t see all of the consequences of the system they were setting up (in fairness, does anyone ever?).
I just finished a book that I think is relevant to this topic: Responsible Parties, by Frances McCall Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro. They are political scientists at Yale. They make the case that the most effective, responsible, accountable government involves exactly two strong political parties, along with a strong legislature, and large diverse districts. They think primaries are a problem, and think it should be up to the parties who represents the party in an election.
Here is an article that discusses some of the topics of the book.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/is-more-democracy-always-better-democracy
I picked up the book after having independently come to some of the positions they advocate regarding the presidency and primaries (both of which they think are problems). It’s well written, with a lot of history and a bit of humor. Highly recommended.
KB player, so would John Quincy Adams. In fact, someone a few years ago set up a Twitter account for him to tweet out some of his aphorisms.
Sackbut, I’m not even sure that’s the best system, though I can see it as a plus over now. And many of the founders didn’t want parties at all.
I don’t know, maybe we should hire our governments, like we do most other jobs. Interviews, credentials, search committees (bipartisan, if we still had parties at that point). Presidents and legislatures would undergo regular performance evaluations, because truthfully elections don’t do a good job at that. And they could be fired if they failed to perform their job.
iknklast, the book does talk about the US founders and their disdain for factions. (They also talk about the American fascination with bipartisanship, and why they think it’s not a good idea.)
Much of what you float in concept is what is accomplished by parties. They choose qualified candidates, who then run for election in their district. If parties are doing a poor job of selecting candidates, they get voted out of power. This doesn’t happen in the US because parties have no ability to select candidates, and little ability to establish a platform in a coherent fashion.
The book is highly critical of the institution of the presidency in the US. It is very difficult to hold a president accountable, and nearly impossible to hold the president’s party accountable, because the legislature may not match the president. They look at a number of other countries with presidential systems, and all have serious structural problems.
I already arrived at the position that parties were good things if done right, and should be more directly involved in candidate selection. I thought many-party would be good; the book has made me reconsider. I am convinced that primaries, and the lengthy and expensive election process associated with them, are bad things. I am also leaning toward the idea that the Senate, with representation by state rather than population, is a bad idea. Most of these problems are likely never to be resolved, though.