ABSTRACT
When it comes to the way American politicians deal with complex problems, H.L. Mencken’s observation is too often on target. A contemporary political scientist might come up with a far less quotable truism: “There are always a number of solutions to every problem-some of them neat, some of them plausible, and all of them partial.” The problems that public authorities in America address on a long-term basis rarely have a single cause. Complex problems require multi-pronged solutions. Nevertheless, politicians search for the silver bullet that has the virtue of being financially practical, ideologically congenial, or easily collapsed into a sound bite. That single solution is, of course, doomed to disappoint.
