Peter Orszag, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, has written an article for The New Republic entitled “Too Much of a Good Thing: Why we need less democracy.” “To solve the serious problems facing our country,” he says, “we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.”
Orszag notes that “polarization” has been growing since about 1970. He casts about for an explanation and rightly rejects gerrymandering as an important contributor. If that were it, there should be less polarization in the Senate than the House, which does not seem to be the case. His best explanation is that Americans are increasingly sorted into locations where we hear only opinions similar to our own. With “the big sort,” more and more of us are living in ideological echo chambers.
Read Full Article »