In the Dallas Morning News, Neal Gabler (full disclosure, he’s a great writer and an old friend) writes about the timidity of American governance. (This was published pre-election.)

For better or worse, Americans are a timorous bunch who only press their government to act when they think national security is at stake. That’s how Eisenhower sold the interstate highway system, how LBJ sold Vietnam and how George W. Bush sold the Iraq war. When we aren’t defending ourselves, government just can’t seem to muster a consensus to do much of anything.

…Because change is only a slogan, because Americans don’t have the political will to encourage their government to act boldly when necessary, and because we shrink from addressing the things that assail us, we aren’t likely to get the car out of the ditch we’re in anytime soon. And while Americans cling to their self-image of intrepidness here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we are on target to demonstrate at the polls that we are anything but.

I think about this when I hear Republicans and the Tea Party People shout that “we’re going to take we’ve taken our government back!” in that slightly rabid way they have, like they’re thisclose to violence if you turn out to be a longhair or a queer or something equally threatening.

I think, what exactly does that mean, take our government back? Who has it—the people who were, oh, democratically elected within the last six years? It’s not like they stole it. In fact, it’s probably more likely that the people who anonymously funded the Tea Party and the GOP stole it. In any case, the mantra clearly doesn’t mean, you know, we’re going to elect more Republicans than Democrats. It means something more than that, something deeper and angrier. But at the same time, since it’s never spelled out, it also means rather less.

Manwhile, in the Financial Times, Bob Rubin writes sagely—and insipidly—about where we go from here.

Thus, our most fundamental challenge is the effectiveness of our political system. Despite substantial legislative actions over the past year and a half, there is widespread and serious concern about the willingness to work across party and ideological lines and to make the tough decisions, necessary to meet our challenges. The historic resilience of our political system, our economy, our culture and our society is a hopeful augur. We have risen to difficult challenges many times in the past and we can do so again. But there is much to do.

So, so true.

Also: If there is a more certain sign of a ghostwriter than the use of the word “augur” as a noun, I have not yet seen it. “Sign” will do just fine, thank you.

And finally, former Harvard money man Mohamed El-Erian writes in the Washington Post today about “what’s next for the economy.”

El-Erian makes the case against political gridlock. The case for it, he says, is that with government paralyzed, capitalism can do what it does best: Make money and put people to work. But that’s not true now, he writes, because capitalism is still recovering from years of financial shenanigans.

This world speaks to a different characterization of private-sector activity - rather than able and willing to move forward unhindered if the government simply gets out of the way, this is a private sector that faces too many headwinds. In these circumstances, high economic growth and job creation require not only that the private sector moves forward but also that it attains critical mass, or what Larry Summers, the departing head of the National Economic Council, called “escape velocity.”

(Escape velocity? Hilarious.)

Simply put, these realities make it necessary for Washington to resist two years of gridlock and policy paralysis. Democrats and Republicans must meet in the middle to implement policies to deal with debt overhangs and structural rigidities. The economy needs political courage….

Which brings us full circle, to Neal Gabler’s point: Maybe we just don’t have the balls. We say we want real change, but then, when someone tries to implement it, we “refudiate” it. Instead, Americans vote in a bunch of candidates with empty promises and absent spines.

Things are getting crazy in this country, and not in a good way. But I guess we’ve seen it before, haven’t we?


Easy Rider 1969 Final Scene en Yahoo! Video