Today we feature another guest post from Jeff Goldberg, who blogged last week about soaring unemployment versus the falling crime rate. Enjoy.
Frustrating as this is in hard times, our system is built for inaction, compromise and half measures.
From left and right our government is assailed for its inability to act decisively to meet our current national challenges.
Rarely in our history do we see decisive political action for the unalloyed public good. The single boldest legislative action taken in American history was the vote of the southern legislatures to secede from the union. Those votes were decisive but were they right and were they good? If bleeding the country was necessary to end slavery then perhaps the votes can be seen in a positive light, but history does not heap praise on the secessionists.
In the fall of 2008 the federal government acted decisively to prevent the perceived imminent collapse of the US financial sector. A Republican president, democratic presidential nominee and the congressional leadership from both parties acted to pass TARP, often contrary to their constituents’ express desires and their own political beliefs.
Recent reports suggest that TARP has worked reasonably well and that the program will end up costing much less than originally budgeted and feared. "For what it’s worth, it’s worked," Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a meeting with college students in Rhode Island. "It’s stabilized the system. The financial system is now much healthier than it was. It’s no longer in crisis, and moreover, the money that went into these financial firms is coming back to the taxpayers with interest. So it turns out to have been not only a successful program, but for the most part, a pretty good investment for taxpayers." Yet a number of federal officeholders, particularly on the right, have paid or will pay a political price for voting in favor of TARP.
Our government is specifically designed to prevent decisive action. Montesquieu wrote of the need to separate and balance the functions and powers of the branches of government. In Federalist 10 Madison wrote that government should serve to temper misdirected passions of the people. Frustrating as this is in hard times, our system is built for inaction, compromise and half measures.
On a recent Real Time With Bill Maher, Cornel West asked why the crisis mentality that led to TARP doesn’t exist for the problem of unemployment? This poignant formulation echoes the larger charge — that the system is broken and unable to act. TARP provides a partial and partially unsatisfying answer — leadership can transcend politics but rarely. In all other times we muddle through. Tweaks to the system and the protests of an angry electorate will not change the basic nature of the system, which is built on the founders’ keen understanding of human weakness.