We’ve ridden our current constitution, and the form of representative democracy it requires, about as far as it can take us. It’s no longer working to protect us, or to provide the vast majority of Americans with a quality of life comparable to that which is possible in the developed world in the mid-21st century, and which is taken for granted by the citizens of other developed countries.
Just look at the last twenty years:
• Richard Clarke warned the Bush administration that the 9/11 attack was coming, but our government ignored him and was unprepared. Amy Zegart, writing in The Atlantic, outlines 23 opportunities that the CIA and the FBI missed to penetrate and stop the 9/11 plot. The most basic role of a government is to protect its people. Ours missed nearly two dozen opportunities to save nearly 3,000 lives in the weeks leading up to that day. The events of 9/11 were both predictable and preventable.
• In Spencer Ackerman’s new book, he writes: “In response to 9/11, America has invaded and occupied two countries, bombed four others for years, killed at least 801,000 people — a full total may never be known — terrified millions more, tortured hundreds, detained thousands, reserved unto itself the right to create a global surveillance dragnet, disposed of its veterans with cruel indifference, called an entire global region criminal or treated it that way, made migration into a crime, and declared most of its actions either legal or constitutional when they clearly were neither. It created at least 21 million refugees and spent more than $6,000,000,000,000 [that’s about $900,000,000 per day for 20 years] on its operations.” And what do we have to show for this lethal mix of incompetence and insanity? Nothing. The Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS still exist and still threaten us.
• The Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 was touched off by events in the housing and financial markets that some people saw coming (people not named Alan Greenspan) and profited from. But the Bush administration did nothing to head off the recession or protect the American people from its consequences. Tens of thousands of people lost their houses, their businesses, their incomes, their dreams, and their futures. In responding to this financial crisis, both the Bush and Obama administrations saved banks and other financial institutions while allowing individuals to suffer these life-changing losses. The Obama administration’s recovery package was way too small, and the country’s recovery from the recession and the suffering endured during the recovery were prolonged and needlessly painful.
• The covid-19 pandemic in the United States has been on a per capita basis far worse than in every other country — developed or undeveloped. The Obama administration left us unprepared for a pandemic. The Trump administration’s response to the pandemic was tragically inept and led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, economic devastation, and further hardship and loss for millions who had barely recovered from the Great Recession. The Biden administration has again and again bungled aspects of our country’s response to the pandemic related to masks and vaccines. As I write this, daily cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are higher than they were when Biden took office in January — in spite of nationwide distribution of highly effective vaccines. He promised competence and has delivered the opposite. One in every 500 Americans — 700,000 people — has died from the disease and we’re not close to defeating it. And is the government doing anything today to prepare for the next pandemic? Of course not.
• In Louisiana and Mississippi, nearly one million people lacked electricity and drinking water after Hurricane Ida obliterated power lines. A winter storm in Texas knocked out power across the state and was responsible for scores of deaths. In California, wildfires menaced Lake Tahoe forcing tens of thousands to flee. In Tennessee, flash floods killed at least 20. Hundreds more perished in a heat wave in the northwest this summer. And in New York City, seven inches of rain fell in just hours drowning people in their own basements. The United States is not ready for climate change and the extreme weather it has brought in spite of the warnings we’ve heard from scientists for decades.
These failures aren’t the fault of just one party or one administration. And they aren’t a product of our hyper-partisan politics which can be solved by a new spirit of bipartisanship in state and federal government. These failures are actually the result of bipartisanship.
Both the Clinton and Bush administrations failed to respond to or take al Qaeda seriously. The tragic invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were supported by bipartisan resolutions in congress, and were conducted by both Republican and Democratic administrations. The weak and ineffective government response to the Great Recession was the product of bipartisan negotiations. Both Republican and Democratic administrations bungled our response to the covid-19 pandemic, and the unfocused economic rescue packages enacted in response, such as they were, each had bipartisan support in congress.
Bipartisanship only leads to unquestioned decisions and policy from a form of government that has demonstrated it’s incapable of protecting its citizens.
We need a new one.
