I've been watching the debacle over paying the bills and the debt ceiling in congress this last few days and last year as well. While I find the House of Representatives' posturing to be maddening I can't be too surprised.
In my mind there are at least three things causing this downfall of functioning government.
Number 1: the US has grown far to big for it's own britches. There are regions in the US larger than most countries in the world. The Northeast is different from the Southwest is different from the Southeast is different from the Middle of America... then there's the Northwest and oh.. Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Each of these regions has their own version of what the US government is good.. and bad for. The OC doesn't care much about what farmers are faced with, it has it's own problems. And vice versa.
Number 2: We've been gerrymandering senate and house districts for years all in good faith that districts should be homogenous, not heterogeneous. When the House and Senate were set up, this was definitely not the case. Senators and Representatives had to take into account many different points of view and find ways to compromise within their district. Ain't so anymore. Now when a pig headed congressman decides he can get re-elected if he only supports or fights one cause, he can get away with it because he knows HIS constituency will go along with the gag. How can Congress solve any big problems when the small ones are the only ones representatives focus on?
Number 3: There were no political parties when the Founding Fathers created our constitution. George Washington, John Adams and in fact the whole crowd were adamantly against the idea. But there were two parties by the time Thomas Jefferson ran for office. (In today's terms he was a democrat.) Now you could say there are five - The Tea Party, The Republican Party, The Socialist Democrats, the Democrats and the Libertarians.
If we can't find agreement, and it seems more and more, we can't, pretty soon we're going to find one group saying... we've had enough of those yahoos who only want xxxxx and don't want to pay for yyyyy.... let's secede. One group pulling one way, one group pulling another and pretty soon the whole pie breaks into pieces.
I hope I'm wrong. Tell me it ain't so.
