As a nation, the United States is awash in a sea of troubles: residual strands of the Covid-19 pandemic, inflation, authoritarian provocation in international relations, ballooning debt, a chaotic southern border, and rising violent crime, to name a few. Yet, a dangerous and pervasive undercurrent underlies all these challenges, frustrating our ability to address them coherently. Extremist polarization has undermined our ability to locate a governing center and move forward as a nation. Several factors have helped to produce and prolong this polarization, including long-standing institutional changes, often starting as well-meaning progressive reforms but yielding pernicious unintended consequences – the over-popularization of the presidential nominating system, campaign finance reform, for starters. The strains in our social and political fabric caused by the pandemic, by reactions to the death of George Floyd, and by the bitter election of 2020 have also helped to weaken tolerance and respectful discourse.
But the proximate catalyst of this polarization is the failure of our political leadership to promote the unity we need. Three individuals in particular bear the most blame and are, ironically, the ones best-positioned to contain and reverse this threat to our common welfare: Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump. The clearest diagnosis of their failure and the surest prognosis for reversing it are to be found in the constitutional vision of the Founders and the institutional roles that Pelosi, Biden, and Trump have both assumed and neglected.
Read Full Article »