ABSTRACT
The central features of the post-1960 American political system, detailed in our previous chapters, have attracted notice from other contemporary political analysts. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, writing in a recent book with Johns Hopkins professor Michael Mandelbaum, drew an ominous implication from several traits we have explained here:
Our political system is stuck. It is under the sway of powerful special interests that work for policies that are at best irrelevant to and at worst counterproductive for the urgent present and future needs of the United States. The two parties are so sharply polarized that they are incapable of arriving at the deep, ideologically painful compromises that major initiatives, of the kind required to meet the major challenges America faces, will require.
(Friedman and Mandelbaum 2011, 331)