ABSTRACT
Distress over the poor performance of our modern democracy seems to be constantly reaching new heights (or perhaps “sinking to new depths” is more fitting). Public focus on democracy’s failures may wax and wane, but the problems become readily apparent whenever the system is stressed. The election and re-election of Donald Trump as US President shocked and dismayed liberals and many traditional free-market conservatives, but also substantiated the depth of the disdain many Americans feel for politics as usual. Our elective government and politics are indisputably failing. During the periodic crises over raising the national debt ceiling, many commentators acknowledge that the American political system is completely dysfunctional. Some even suggest it might be beyond repair. In discussing President Obama’s concessions to Republican demands back during the July 2011 standoff, Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times:
In the long run, however, Democrats won’t be the only losers. What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t.
(Krugman 2011)