Washington is currently dominated by tribes, not enlightened representatives, that rule by tabu. You cannot even acknowledge that some new taxes are appropriate, if you are a Republican. You must not agree that entitlement spending requires some limits, if you are a Democrat. This is not governance. It is guerilla warfare.

The effect is what has just begun on March 1: sequestration. Since Congress could not agree on a mix of new taxes and new entitlement cuts, the United States will begin to implement across-the-board spending cuts divided evenly between domestic and military appropriations. The cuts will total $984 billion, and they are immediate.

This is a textbook example of how NOT to govern. The members of Congress are not talking across parties. They are not working hard for a deal to manage this new economic environment. They are sitting back, pretending the cuts are not as damaging as they are, and encouraging everyone to get on with their lives - to “go shopping,” as a previous president put it.

The general political nonchalance about the sequester stands in start contrast to the communities with large numbers of military support personnel who will face deep pay cuts, as well as students and small businesses who will not get promised loans. The sequester hurts most in bringing all government work to a standstill. Under sequester, you cannot hire new people, you cannot invest in valuable new programs, and you cannot think ahead. The U.S. government has placed its advanced society into a bickering and backward headlock.

What should we expect? A few more weeks of public apathy toward the sequester, followed by a quick increase in public outrage when the sequester cuts start to hurt badly.

What should we do? That is a very hard question to answer. Our elected leaders cower before their most extreme supporters, and they discredit all routes to necessary compromise. They repeatedly show poor judgment.

The sequester standoff will only end when citizens demand not just a deal, but a renewed commitment to bipartisan efforts at budgeting. Citizens must make it clear to members of Congress that present behavior is unacceptable. Voters must withhold their votes from the many destructive personalities at the Capitol.

I dream today of a sequester-inspired movement of politically engaged young people. New leaders less entrapped in the inherited commitments of established politicians can act in more cooperative ways. A sequester-inspired movement will not necessarily create street barricades. Instead, I envision a new movement following our standoff as the public searches for the very dynamism it presently lacks. It is time to say “enough” (!) to elected leaders, Democrats and Republicans, and make bipartisan fiscal cooperation a new organizing principle for our fragmented and antagonistic political system.

Policy is about personnel. We need better personnel in government. The frustration of the sequester should motivate all of us to force a change in the federal government’s mode of operation. To govern is to work with others, friends and enemies. To be a good citizen is to demand much more courage and foresight than we are getting from the people elected to serve our needs. The standoff of the sequester shows it is time for all Americans to stand up and demand more.

The opinions expressed in this blog are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of either Global Brief or the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.

Obama’s Second Inaugural will not stand out among the great speeches of our time, or our history. It will not inspire, and it will not convince skeptics. Although the speech was solid, and even radical at times, it sounded more like a state of the union (with a litany of programs) rather than a new call to arms for a new administration.

The speech tells us that the president will start his second term as he ended his last. He will continue to speak forcefully for Democratic programs that emphasize economic fairness and social justice. These programs are broadly popular, and they are the issues that helped reelect him in a hard fought campaign. The speech also tells us that the president will not offer a new vision for his second administration. He will double-down on what he believes in, and he will appeal over the heads of Congress to his public supporters.

The president’s speech and his strategy are sensible. By mobilizing his supporters and appealing to sympathizers, Obama is in a position to pressure a divided Republican Party. He can claim victory for legislative successes. He can blame Republicans for harming the country if they threaten to stymie his initiatives or even shut down the government. This strategy seemed to work already, as Republicans agreed in recent days to a temporary extension of the nation’s debt ceiling without major conditions.

President Obama’s Second Inaugural gives him a strong start on his new administration, but it is also a lost opportunity. To bring a divided country together, citizens need more than a persuasive list of programs. They need a new image of what our country is about, a new vision for what our future will be.

This is what the great inaugural speeches offered. We remember words from Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy because they painted a new picture of the nation, and they offered a new stirring sentiment for bringing divided Americans together. The best inaugurals used words and emotions to move listeners into a new place.

Obama did not do that today. He did not articulate a new image of America. He did not provide new words to heal our divisions. Obama spoke well, but he did not transcend his majestic moment. Maybe that is just not possible in our days of continued national division.

The opinions expressed in this blog are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of either Global Brief or the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.

This new year, however, my patriotism is accompanied by a profound sense of shame. I am ashamed at how American citizens (national figures, local leaders, and ordinary citizens) have behaved in 2012. Repeatedly, we have given-in to our base instincts and shown the worst of who we are. This is not entirely new, but it seems so much more extreme in the experience of the last year. We had many opportunities to pull together and remind ourselves of why we love our country. Instead, we chose recrimination, selfishness, and willful stupidity. We are all to blame in varying degrees.

2012 is ending with abundant evidence for this self-criticism. Congressional representatives from both political parties have abandoned negotiations to address the huge holes in our national budget. Instead, they are fighting like spoiled children over the details of a temporary tax measure that when reached, close to the midnight deadline, will only push the pain back until the next budget fight a month later.

The reelected president (whom I voted for) has remained aloof from all of this. He compounded his lack of leadership by giving a narcissistic speech at midday calling for a deal while condemning the Republicans whom he insists must compromise. He then told Congress to solve the problem and returned to hiding.

Why is our president giving empty speeches rather than placing himself at the center of the very negotiations he demands? Why has he left the negotiations to others while he pontificates? My kids are following all of this with me and they easily recognize the childishness of the behavior in Congress and the White House.

The discussion of guns in the last few weeks has been even worse. The senseless shooting of twenty small children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut touched every citizen. We all have young children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews who attend school. If they cannot be safe in school, where can they be safe? How can we educate our children to live in peace and freedom if they require armed guards, as well as coloring books, in their classrooms?

Instead of opening a difficult but crucial discussion about childhood, education, safety, and freedom our society has fallen immediately into very stale debates about gun ownership. Do guns kill people or protect them? What does the Second Amendment mean? These are important questions, but they are diversions from the real issues.

We are afraid to ask ourselves the tough questions that take us out of our comfortable partisan positions. The issue is not gun ownership or gun control. The fundamental question is how we want to invest in our future, and the children who will determine our future. What kinds of schools? What kinds of measures to assure safety and freedom at schools? A forward-looking society asks these questions, as Americans did a generation ago. A selfish, frightened, and stupid society talks about gun rights when the subject is children.

I am ashamed of America because I am a patriot who knows our society is capable of so much more. I am a historian who has seen the evidence of our nation’s capacity for humanity, self-improvement, and leadership. I am a citizen who has benefited from these extraordinary American capacities.

My resolution this new year is to do everything I can to confront my shame, and remind myself and others that we must do better. For all the structural problems with our gerrymandered districts and moneyed elections, we can still demand better behavior from our elected leaders. For all the incentives to consume and destroy, we can still live more selfless and sustainable lives. For all the ubiquitous examples of pettiness, cowardice, and short-term gratification in Congress and on Main Street, we can make ourselves examples of thoughtful, humane, and forward-looking lives. Leadership begins by looking in the mirror and demanding better of ourselves, each and every one of us.

Only in America could a Hindu-Jewish child of immigrants, like myself, internalize the central insight of the Puritans: We are all sinners. Salvation comes from turning sin into self-improvement. There is no better time to start than with our first acts of a new year.

The opinions expressed in this blog are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of either Global Brief or the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.

The politics of old is the continuing power of the Rustbelt states filled with traditional auto workers, teachers, small town business-owners, and middle-income retirees. These mostly white voters came out in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa to give President Obama the key votes he needed for reelection. He promised empathy and fairness, rather than the managerial flash offered by the wealthy CEO of Bain Capital. Wall Street might attract elite college graduates from fancy universities, but it does not command popular support from the center of the country, and it probably never will.

The politics of the new is the arrival of so many untraditional voters in presidential elections. These are Latino citizens in California, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and Ohio. Soon Latino voters will shape outcomes in Texas and Arizona too. The more vocal voters also include women, especially educated and professional women, who have become a larger part of the electorate than men. Young voters are also making their voices heard, many voting for the first time in this election.

President Obama won the overwhelming majority of all of these “new” voters, as did many other Democratic Senate candidates in Massachusetts and Indiana. The Republicans ignored and often alienated most of these voters. Mitt Romney is probably the least popular presidential candidate among women and minority voters since Barry Goldwater almost fifty years ago.

Politics is always about strange bedfellows. For all the talk of partisan divides, the real story is about the new combinations and partnerships emerging before our eyes. Rustbelt workers, women, Latinos, and the youth are the new center of gravity in American politics. President Obama brought these groups together with great success in the 2012 presidential election. The question now is if he can covert this coalition into a force for effective governance. President Obama’s skills in leveraging the mix of the old and the new will define his second term, and the future of our country.

The opinions expressed in this blog are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of either Global Brief or the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.

I am not nostalgic for a mythical moment of “clean” and “substantive” politics in American society. I know very well that such a moment never occurred. Despite their powdered wigs and dignified public demeanor, even our nation’s founders engaged in vicious attacks against opponents. Two of the greatest early American politicians, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, literally came to blows, with Hamilton dying from a bullet fired by Burr’s dueling gun. American politics have always involved brawling. Negative advertising is only a modern form of the traditional campaign.

What is new, however, is the use of information overload to obscure positions. Both President Obama and Governor Romney are throwing more “facts” at listeners than ever before, but they are refusing to offer coherent argued positions. They each claim to support lower taxes, increased government revenue, lower deficits, and increased spending. They each pledge to assert more American strength abroad while bringing the troops home. Most confusing, President Obama and Governor Romney agree that job creation is a priority and they simultaneously oppose jobs plans, programs, or even targeted investments in job creation and training at home. Watching them throw around the data from all directions, one gets more information but less clarity about how purpose and policy will fit together. It is like listening to kids argue about who started a fight. As they debate the facts, it becomes easier to continue the fight than create a useful path forward.

We need debates in our campaigns, but not these. The problem is more than format. It is about what we as citizens have come to expect in an age of talk radio and flaming blogs where a premium is placed on who shouts loudest and longest, not who makes the most persuasive argument under intensive questioning. We are a public culture of argument without real debate, and that needs to change if we ever want a true marketplace of ideas. At present we have an overload of facts and positions, without the interrogation and testing necessary for finding the truth.

So here is what I propose: Let’s scrap the open “foreign policy” brawl that is planned for the next debate. Instead, the public should demand that the two candidates sit down together at a table (please no more shoulder-to-shoulder jousting!) with an agreed focus on one discrete topic, for example tax policy or job creation or the Iranian nuclear project. A real debate would require each candidate to explain what he will do in the next four years to address the specific challenge. After that, each candidate should be allowed to cross-examine the other with short questions, not statements.

Under this scheme, President Obama can describe the budget he hopes to pass. Governor Romney can then ask about details regarding deficits and pork in Obama’s proposed budget. Governor Romney can then outline his own proposed budget. President Obama can ask him about details concerning income inequality and cuts to essential services in Romney’s plan. This is the form of dignified interrogation that works in corporate boardrooms, in academic seminars, and in policy-making bodies like the National Security Council. It is also how generals assess competing war plans. Why should we expect less of our presidential candidates?

Proposing a detailed plan and defending it against substantive questions about its content and consequences – that is the most effective test of leadership. That is also what presidential debates should be about. We have had enlightening debates of this kind in the past with diverse candidates, including George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot in 1996, as well as Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in 1980. The time has come for a return to policy focus without flamboyant personal attacks. The future of the United States will not be determined by who is best at tearing down his opponent. The progress of our society will hinge on implementing policies that prove, under scrutiny, most helpful to the productive parts of the public.

This local threat comes at the precise moment when more than 15 countries are witnessing major violent protests by Muslim groups against American and other Western facilities. From Libya to Egypt to Tunisia to Yemen to India and Bangladesh, threats to Americans are proliferating around the world right now. All of a sudden, it appears that anger has risen to a breaking point among many groups. In Libya, this dynamic resulted in the tragic murder of a widely respected American ambassador and other personnel.

The source or the “reason” for this global violence is worthy of study, but it is not the key point. What historians have noted but not sufficiently analyzed is the contagion of public violence at certain moments, like the one we are living in today. Acts of public anger spread across societies, and they inspire diverse “copy-cats,” under specific circumstances.

What are the circumstances that create this contagion? One element stands out: the dislocation of people from established sources of order. Public violence is a form of political expression by those who are disconnected from institutions, relationships, and beliefs that prohibit such behavior. Public violence is committed by people who have access to resources and knowledge, but are not integrated into the mainstream uses of those resources and knowledge. It is a radicalism of some semi-privileged, partially educated, and partially mobile people in various societies who recognize their potential and resent alleged “outsiders” who are conspiring to hold them back. These “outsiders” are American officials in the Middle East, and representatives of elite universities within the United States.

Why do these acts of violence spread so fast and so far? Psychologists have long observed the feelings of “actualization,” “belonging,” even “pleasure” that alienated individuals feel when they see their targets of anger suffering punishment. The witnessing of an attack on an American embassy emotionally inspires on-lookers who do not identify with the perpetrators, but share a wish to hurt the victims. The adrenal rush of seeing a powerful enemy brought low is intoxicating. Suddenly, dreams of turning the tables on the powerful seem possible. Abstract wishes find what appears to be an imperative moment for decisive action.

We want to think that history moves in slow and deliberate steps toward some improved goal, but that is not the case. History moves in spurts of forward progress and backward regression. These spurts are quick and unpredictable. They are frequently violent and they are increasingly global.

What should we do? If this analysis is correct, we should expect more violence to spread in the coming days. There will be more attacks on American and Western embassies. There will be more threats to universities and other domestic institutions.

The worst reaction would be to fan the flames of further violence with indiscriminate retaliatory attacks and apocalyptic rhetoric. Citizens and leaders must discredit the violence we are seeing at home and abroad with clear language about what our society believes, why our institutions are filled with integrity, and why we will never allow the violent few to hijack the good work of the peaceful many. Law enforcement is critical, patience is necessary, and civilized conversation is most important of all.

We need show that we are better than the violence, and that we are a society that values connections to everyone - even those who sometimes feel the world is set against them. Violent spurts dissipate when they lose their initial appeal among those looking for some kind of quick improvement to their unsatisfying circumstances. This is true in Libya, in Egypt, and even in Austin, Texas.

The opinions expressed in this blog are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of either Global Brief or the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.

Armstrong was born into a society stuck in Depression. When he turned three, in 1933, one-in-four Americans were out of work. The country’s economy was contracting and no one had a solution, especially not the smiling new president from New York, Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt famously told Americans “they have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Young men, like Armstrong, had to overcome the fear all around them and manufacture new sources of hope.

Things became worse before they became better. Armstrong watched his country suffer a devastating attack at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The nation then spent nearly four years sacrificing at home to fight formidable fascist adversaries in Europe and Asia. The nation had never fought on this scale before. It had to learn, and it had to learn fast.

Armstrong’s career of public service began in the shadow of the Depression and the Second World War. He became a U.S. Navy aviator, flying 78 missions during the Korean War. He was part of a new Cold War generation that brought new talent, ingenuity, and courage to making the world better than it had been. He imbibed the progressive “can do” spirit of a large cohort of young citizens who joined the military, attended university, and defined their lives by their idealism and their service — not their bank accounts.

Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson recognized the potential for Armstrong’s generation of young citizens. Johnson’s driving ambition was to create opportunities for the most talented Americans, enabling them to contribute more to their society in the struggle against communism, poverty, and bigotry. This larger-than-life Texan believed that space exploration was a central part of pushing Americans to achieve more. He played a vital role in creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and placing one of its main facilities in Houston.

Lyndon Johnson’s predecessor in the White House, President John F. Kennedy, promised that Americans would reach the moon and NASA did the work. The organization created the Apollo moon-landing program in 1963. Neil Armstrong was one of the first recruits. He launched into space on the Gemini spacecraft in March 1966. Then three years later he had the opportunity to lead the first moon landing as the commander of the Apollo 11 mission.

It seems so long ago. Amidst the riots at home, the war in Vietnam, and the deep partisan divisions at the time, the Apollo 11 moon landing on 20 July 1969 brought Americans together to appreciate their potential as a country. The moon landing inspired viewers in a way that no television event had done before or since. It showed that citizens could conquer great odds, could innovate to solve big problems, and could follow big dreams. It captured both the possibilities of forward-looking government and the integrity of public-minded citizens. The moon-landing reminded people of how much Americans could accomplish when they worked together and for something more than themselves. This was not about markets or entitlements. It was about commitment, sacrifice, and investment as a society in our best qualities.

We can do the same today. We have so many more resources than Armstrong’s generation. We have so many possibilities. We have turned away from space because we have, I am sorry to say, forgotten who we are as a society. American greatness is the greatness of big dreams. We are a society of frontiers and possibilities - a society that is always re-making itself.

We need to push that cycle again. We need more Neil Armstrongs, more Lyndon Johnsons, and more intelligent investments in selective programs like Apollo. Yes, we need to cut some waste. Yes, we need to tighten our belts. But, yes we also need to invest in making ourselves better. Where are those investments today? How can we dream big again? I hope Neil Armstrong’s life inspires us to define a new frontier for a country that must recover its deepest possibilities. The time has come for another generational calling. Perhaps our best universities can lead the way…

The opinions expressed in this blog are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of either Global Brief or the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.

This world was completely unimaginable for Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower. They had each witnessed the deep anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism of mainstream American institutions, including universities, corporations, government offices, and social clubs. They had seen how national voters rejected one of the most skilled politicians of early twentieth century America, Governor Alfred Smith of New York, in part because of his Catholic beliefs.

In 1956 two of the most prominent writers in the United States, sociologist C. Wright Mills and journalist Richard Rovere, wrote scathing books attacking the narrow-mindedness of American leaders. They blamed the racism, inequality, and Cold War militarism of American society on what Rovere called an “Establishment” of like-thinking White male Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) who shared schools, churches, families, and ideas. Brothers of the “Establishment” promoted one another and a vision of the United States that benefited their kind disproportionately, Rovere alleged. In even more radical words, Mills diagnosed the “Power Elite” as a cabal to make democracy and capitalism serve the few, not the many.

One can disagree with the tone of Rovere and Mills, but they had evidence on their side. American political leaders looked nothing like they do today. They were, almost without exception, WASPs in the 1950s. The real question was whether one was Presbyterian (Dwight Eisenhower, George Kennan, and John Foster Dulles) or Episcopalian (Franklin Roosevelt and Dean Acheson). John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960 as the first Catholic president was indeed a breakthrough, but he continued to surround himself with figures from the traditional Protestant backgrounds.

Why did this matter? Historians have analyzed that question in depth. Some of the best scholars on the subject (including William Inboden, Andrew Preston, David Hollinger, Seth Jacobs, and Robert Dean) have shown that mainline Protestantism encouraged a sense of national mission in the postwar struggle against atheistic communism. Historians have also analyzed how religious faith informed international networks of aid and support. It mattered enormously to mainline Protestants that the Chinese Nationalists were Christian and the Chinese Communists were not.

The social and political upheavals of the 1960s discredited the WASP near-monopoly on political power in the United States. A new generation of well-educated and ambitious non-Protestant Americans asserted a right to rule. A more international non-Protestant group of figures pushed their way into power by talent, money, and selective patronage. That is the story of Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeleine Albright, and Paul Wolfowitz - all of whom would have been excluded from political power in 1950s America. No one in Eisenhower’s America could have imagined a presidential contest between an African-American incumbent and a Mormon challenger, each of whom has Catholic running-mates.

The end of the WASP “Establishment” has meant a more open American political system. Many are still excluded and money often talks louder than talent. Nonetheless, we should take note of this tectonic opening, as well as the evidence of adaptability in the American political system, and think about ways to enhance these qualities for better policy-making in the future.

Can we imagine new ways to open the system for less-monied interests? Can we imagine new ways to incorporate other non-Protestant, non-Catholic, and non-Jewish perspectives that would enhance the effectiveness of American policies around the world? The United States is an evolving political experiment, and as James Madison predicted, the continual evolution of a pluralistic society is messy but necessary. All we can do is take inspiration from our recent past to push for more openness and change, not less. At their core, Americans are an “anti-Establishment” people.

The opinions expressed in this blog are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of either Global Brief or the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.

Ryan is risky because he is on record as favoring major cuts in federal entitlement spending, especially for the costly Medicare program that pays the health expenses of so many aging citizens. This program is bankrupting our country, but it is vital for the medical sustenance of millions of families. Ryan is uncertain because he is largely defined by this one issue, but still unknown, even in his home state of Wisconsin. He has not, in fact, been a major participant in the recent debates about the future of the state’s government or the attempted recall of Governor Scott Walker. Ryan is a seven-term congressman who has represented a district that centers on the small and depressed city of Janesville, that lost its largest employer, a General Motors auto plant. The city has had an unemployment rate around 10 percent for more than two years.

Ryan’s presence will shift the presidential debate toward questions about the future of the American economy. How will the respective candidates get the economy moving again? How will they reform fiscal policy for growth and fairness? How will they invest in the country’s future? These are the issues Ryan will hit in all of his appearances. These are the issues that will define him and Romney’s judgment in associating his campaign with him.

I am not sure that the American public will gravitate to Ryan’s vision. I am not sure that he will prove persuasive outside pockets of fiscal conservatism. I do believe, however, that he will turn the so far vapid presidential debate into a discussion about what kind of country Americans want to build, how they want to spend their money, and who should pay. These are the decisive questions for both domestic and foreign policy. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will have to say much more about what they hope to do if elected. Observers of all political stripes should be grateful that Ryan’s choice encourages more substance and vision, not just our recent politics as usual.

The opinions expressed in this blog are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of either Global Brief or the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire did not collapse in 1918 because it failed to cultivate new ideas or nurture personal freedom. It was filled with expressive, entrepreneurial, and free-thinking groups. The problem was that the Habsburg political system, which for three centuries had held diverse groups together, generated remarkable wealth, and defeated foreign tyrants (notably Napoleon), failed to adjust to new demands for national independence and democratic participation. Franz-Josef served as Emperor for more than sixty years before his death in 1916, as a pious, hard-working, and fair-minded political leader. He even encouraged equality for Jews at a time of rising anti-Semitism throughout Europe. Nonetheless, the system of imperial monarchy that he directed failed to address the growing demands for independence, development, and wealth redistribution throughout his lands. Despite his efforts, he was a prisoner of a stagnant and outdated set of political institutions.

Even with the best of leaders and institutions, large societies cannot prosper if they cannot adjust to change. At the same time that the cosmopolitan city of Vienna entered a terminal crisis in 1914, much more provincial cities like Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Cleveland led a rapid growth in American wealth and power behind their flexible political systems of governance. These midwestern cities were the heart of a Progressive Movement that courageously assessed the needs of businesses and citizens at the time, and experimented with institutions in ways that traditional Europeans would never contemplate. The Progressives believed in the U.S. Constitution, but they took their inspiration from the needs of the time, what William James and John Dewey called a “pragmatic” impulse.

Pragmatic reforms were the engine behind the transformations that allowed American society to grow and adjust while European society stagnated. Americans in the late nineteenth century created the public high school before any other society, with the expectation that all workers needed some basic vocational and intellectual preparation for a modern economy. Americans invested in railroads and highways on a scale that no other society would match until Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Most important, Americans expanded political participation for poor citizens, for immigrants, and for women beyond other countries at the time. (African-Americans, still frequently denied the right to vote in the former Confederacy, were the notable exception to this final trend.)

When the Austro-Hungarian Empire entered the First World War it was a sophisticated but stagnant political regime, unable to harness the creativity of its citizens for victory in war or prosperity thereafter. When the United States entered the First World War it had a still provincial but incredibly dynamic government, ready to experiment with new policies and institutions, best embodied by the creation of the Federal Reserve System to manage a modern economy in 1913, and President Woodrow Wilson’s articulation of the “Fourteen Points” to manage a modern world system in 1918. People in Chicago and Detroit were not better innovators than their counterparts in Vienna, but they had a government that was more responsive and encouraging of their new solutions for contemporary challenges.

This basic historical analysis is the source of my combined frustration and optimism about the future of the United States in the early twenty-first century. Our society is filled with more creative young people than ever before. Just look at our technology, our medicine, our entertainment industries, and our university campuses. No other country has as many diverse individuals pushing the boundaries of innovation on a daily basis. We continue to nurture and attract the best people in these and other fields. American society is as creative as it has ever been, as impressive as the Vienna of Mozart and Beethoven.

The problem is our governance, and that is the source of my frustration. I believe this is a frustration shared by millions of other Americans. Our political system that served us so well in the past does not harness the creativity of our citizens today. It does not address the core challenges that most need flexibility and innovation. Our political system is stagnant and non-responsive to needs across society. Our political system often disgusts us in its daily operations, and it does not inspire us. Citizens do not look up to our politicians for good reason.

Despite all of our new technology, we have failed to build twenty-first century infrastructure for our society. Our electrical power grid, our roads, our airports – they are all crumbling. Despite our remarkable advances in medicine, we have made absolutely no progress during the last decade in delivering health care to all citizens in a way that is affordable, cost-effective, and sustainable. We are, in fact, bankrupting ourselves because we cannot manage the best medicine in the world. And then there is education. Since the 1970s our system of education has failed to provide the social mobility for hard-working people of modest means that it pioneered in prior generations. Children of well-educated professional parents get a high quality education today, preparing them for success. Children of poorly educated non-professional parents get an inferior education, and they are statistically stuck in the same circumstances where they started. What happened to the American dream of self-improvement for the unwashed masses?

The real “game changer” for the American future is whether our society can summon the will to bring the creative impulses of our citizens into government. We have good solutions for our challenges, but they are not getting attention from our government as it exists. American citizens must demand creative leaders and more dynamic political institutions, as they have not in the last decade. American voters must begin, as they did in the late nineteenth century, by electing school board leaders, mayors, and governors who offer innovative policies, not the empty rhetoric about cutting waste or class warfare that animates this year’s presidential election so far. The United States needs more innovative and responsive government if it is to avoid the fate of Habsburg Vienna.

The opinions expressed in this blog are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of either Global Brief or the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs.