One Party Democracy in America

Although Il Principe is no fan of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman due to his indifferent attitude towards the Palestinian people or his unwillingness to use his popularity to talk about the military industrial congressional complex, Thomas Friedman however understands geo-economics and the continuing shift of power to Asia in the 21st century.

In a very good article Friedman published on September 9, 20009 entitled Our One-Party Democracy; Friedman offers a powerful critique of the most fundamental problem affecting the American political process, the inability of American politicians to put party differences aside for the good of the country. In the article, Friedman writes:

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

Our one-party democracy is worse. The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying “no.” Many of them just want President Obama to fail. Such a waste. Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he’s a centrist. But if he’s forced to depend entirely on his own party to pass legislation, he will be whipsawed by its different factions.

Look at the climate/energy bill that came out of the House. Its sponsors had to work twice as hard to produce this breakthrough cap-and-trade legislation. Why? Because with basically no G.O.P. representatives willing to vote for any price on carbon that would stimulate investments in clean energy and energy efficiency, the sponsors had to rely entirely on Democrats — and that meant paying off coal-state and agriculture Democrats with pork.

In another words, both republicans and democrats in America are trapped within an antiquated status quo system and care more about taking care of the interests of the people and organizations that have given them money, than they do about the interests of the people who cannot or will not contribute to their campaigns. This is unmistakably evident in the Afghanistan war continuing, even though over 60 percent of Americans no longer support or believe the war should continue.