For the first time in many years, I actually agree 100% with David Brooks! Don't worry, it probably won't last.
However, this column explains precisely what is wrong with modern politics. It also explains why neither party has had a descent leader in a long time.
I would add something vital that wasn't mentioned: Clearly both parties think only about winning the next election. A political system cannot be healthy if nobody in power is thinking long term about how things should be, but more importantly, they can't make progress towards how things should be if they never talk about it!
We said this from the beginning of the Obama administration. We've said he needs to talk about stuff even if it doesn't lend itself to the political message de jour. But Obama has had a problem when he has tried this, because it turns out he doesn't seem to have a good vision of how policies should be, he only envisioned how politics should be.
No good leader should try to change politics directly. Rather, they should provide clear leadership and a coherent direction regardless of how it plays out politically in the next election. Without this, our system will only degrade further and further.
'There have been no substantial articles about the suffering in Africa and how were going to fix it.'
Whoa! *We're* going to fix it? Assuming it can be 'fixed', I thought the horrible evil imperialist USA couldn't do anything right, and that vaccines were an evil plot by Big Pharma! I thought all native cultures were good and wholesome, including the funeral rites for which the Ebola victims' families in Africa demanded the return of the bodies, which brought them into direct and intimate contact with the infected corpses. It's only the West that can be wrong, and modern science is bad, remember?
Get your party line straight.
I take exception to Prof. Aslan positioning his own arguments as the more "sophisticated" by condemning essentially everyone who disagrees with him for a failure of such sophistication. A cute college debating trick but hardly persuasive or indicative of the substance behind any of the arguments.
The point that majority Muslim nations have on several occasions elected women to their highest offices is factually correct but horribly misleading. In the case of Pakistan and Indonesia, the women in question were from family dynasties, and their election was a reflection of those dynasties' political power more than the openness of the electorate to a female chief executive. Similarly, in Turkey when Tansu Ciller was elected, it was because of her party's political dominance. Prof. Aslan might as well cite Elizabeth I as an example of how much more advanced midieval England was than modern America when it comes to women's rights.
Lord of the Flies with modern weapons. Awful. Scary.
This amendment isn't going to happen. Make congressmen "less dependent on their donor base"? Eliminate the elections in which "the electorate has been whiter, wealthier, older"? You are talking about our rulers, particularly the first group (the wealthy). They aren't going to support a plan to weaken their power.
Perhaps the framers "would not be pleased with the dysfunction, partisan acrimony and public dissatisfaction that plague modern [US] politics." But one of our major parties is only too pleased. As the party associated with the idea that "government is the problem", they benefit from dysfunction. Besides, since their agenda is contrary to the interests of the average American, they also benefit when so much of the citizenry develop the all-too-common idea that "they're all no good". That idea keeps such people from examining who is better and who is worse. I see that happening among people I talk to. The result is good for those who ARE worse, and they are not going to allow the situation to change.
