On that budget deal... Megan McArdle is a sober voice of reason, free of the partisan blinders that most commentators have on economic issues. She thinks the Republicans got the best of this deal, for some interesting and (at least to me) not too obvious reasons.
She may well be right, but to me the gamesmanship that seems to be 99% or more of the effort invested is more evidence of something fundamentally broken about our system of government. After almost 250 years of politicians building a body of knowledge about how to game the system, they've gamed it almost to death. I'm beginning to be convinced of something not a few historians have concluded: that no system of government (or at least, none yet invented) has the DNA to become permanent institutions. Furthermore, the easier it is for citizens of any political system to communicate and organize, the lower that system of government's lifetime is. American democracy has met the Internet, and I wonder if American democracy will last out even my own lifetime...
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