Brent Scowcroft Center Senior Adviser Harlan Ullman writes for Huffington Post on why the United States seem less governable now than ever before:
The world seems a right mess! Ebola is wreaking havoc in West Africa. Spillover effects are more than likely to expand geographically, not lessen. The Islamic State threatens to control Iraq and Syria with a perverted ideology that in evilness approaches and may surpass the Nazis during World War II. And despite elections in America, the nation seems less, not more governable.
Why is that?
First, a political system of checks and balances invented by the best minds of the 18th century seems woefully inadequate in addressing the complex, complicated and very dangerous world of the 21st century.
Second, both political parties have become dominated by their extreme wings shutting out the center and strangling the prospect of compromise as neither side will agree on the most basic issues of tax and spend and the size of government.