Government's End: Why Washington Stopped Working - Softcover

Rauch, Jonathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1891620495 ISBN 13: 9781891620492

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 1999

Synopsis

An earlier edition of this extraordinarily prescient, elegantly written book created a sensation among Washington media insiders when it was published more than five years ago under the title Demosclerosis. In it, Jonathan Rauch, a former correspondent for The Economist and a columnist for National Journal, showed with startling clarity the reasons why America's political system (and, in fact, other political systems as well) was becoming increasingly ineffective. Today, as Rauch's predictions continue to manifest themselves in a national politics of "sound and fury" and little effective legislation, and in increasing voter cynicism, this book has achieved renown as the classic and essential work on why politics and government don't work. In Government's End, Rauch has completely rewritten and updated his earlier work to reassess his theory, analyze the political stalemate of the last few years, and explain why sweeping reform efforts of the kind led by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Newt Gingrich aren't the answers. He also looks ahead at what is likely to happen -- or not happen -- next, and proposes ideas for what we must do to fix the system. For anyone who cares about the health of American democracy -- and indeed of international security -- Government's End is a fascinating, disturbing, and vitally important book.

About this title

About the Author

Acclaimed as the smartest young political journalist in Washington, Jonathan Rauch writes a bi-weekly column for National Journal and contributes widely to other magazines and journals. A graduate of Yale University, he lives in Washington, D.C.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A century and a half ago, Alexis de Tocqueville came to America and concluded that democracy's Achilles' heel was tyranny of the majority. "The majority in the United States has immense actual power and a power of opinion which is almost as great," he said. "If freedom is ever lost in America, that will be due to the omnipotence of the majority driving the minorities to desperation and forcing them to appeal to physical force." But democracy, here and elsewhere, has not succumbed to majoritarian tyranny. In fact, America has probably done a better job protecting minorities than any other society in history.

A hundred years after Tocqueville, many people worried that democracy's vulnerability lay in its lack of resolve in the face of totalitarianism. Dictators, after all, could make decisions almost instantaneously, while democratic institutions dithered and deliberated. That fear, too, was misplaced. American democracy saw the dictators to their graves. It saw the Cold War through in a display of consistency and resolve which history can hardly match. Dithering democracies turned out to have the better side of the deal: they turned out to be much better than dictatorships at finding and correcting their mistakes before mistakes became cataclysms.

Today it appears that democracy's truer vulnerability lies closer to home--in the democratic public's tendency to form ever more groups clamoring for ever more goodies and perks and then defending them to the death. Free and stable societies, it seems, tend to drift toward economic cannibalism and governmental calcification, unless they make a positive effort to fight the current....

One reason democracy wasn't done in by majoritarian tyranny or by the dictators' resolve was that people became worried about both threats, and so managed to defeat them. The current threat is more insidious. It operates quietly and slowly from within, giving us no belligerent "them" to bravely stand up to--no majoritarian lynch mobs with nooses, no implacable Stalins with armies. It is a crisis of American appetites.

This book is not an apocalyptic tirade. It is not about the imminent death of American civilization or democracy or prosperity; I believe in no such thing. It is, rather, about a profound change in American society and behavior over the past thirty or so years which is compromising Americans' ability to govern ourselves and to solve common problems. It is an attempt to show how American society has reordered itself so as to make politicians less and less able to meet the expectations of the citizenry. It is about a social game in which Americans have trapped each other: a game of beggar-thy-neighbor and get-mine-first that damages the economy and chokes the government.

We cannot cope with the game, and mitigate its ravages, until we understand how it captures and uses us. Resentful scapegoating of liberals, conservatives, government, business, foreigners, wealthy elites, the poor, politicians, and everyone else does no good at all. A nation of expectant whiners cannot see through the trap that I am about to describe.

Edition details

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1891620495
• ISBN 13: 9781891620492
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304