It comes from the CFR, but they get a lot of things right in the piece.

An exerpt from the article:

DO-NOTHING POLITICS

The United States has been and can continue to be the world's most important source of new ideas, big and small, technical and creative, economic and political. (If it were truly innovative, it could generate new ideas to produce new kinds of energy.) But to do that, it has to make some significant changes. The United States has a history of worrying that it is losing its edge. Today's is at least the fourth wave of such concern since World War II. The first was in the late 1950s, a result of the Soviet Union's launching of the Sputnik satellite. The second was in the early 1970s, when high oil prices and slow growth convinced Americans that Western Europe and Saudi Arabia were the powers of the future. The third one arrived in the mid-1980s, when most experts believed that Japan would be the technologically and economically dominant superpower of the future. The concern in each of these cases was well founded, the projections intelligent. But none of the feared scenarios came to pass. The reason is that the U.S. system proved to be flexible, resourceful, and resilient, able to correct its mistakes and shift its attention. A focus on U.S. economic decline ended up preventing it.

The problem today is that the U.S. political system seems to have lost its ability to fix its ailments. The economic problems in the United States today are real, but by and large they are not the product of deep inefficiencies within the U.S. economy, nor are they reflections of cultural decay. They are the consequences of specific government policies. Different policies could quickly and relatively easily move the United States onto a far more stable footing. A set of sensible reforms could be enacted tomorrow to trim wasteful spending and subsidies, increase savings, expand training in science and technology, secure pensions, create a workable immigration process, and achieve significant efficiencies in the use of energy. Policy experts do not have wide disagreements on most of these issues, and none of the proposed measures would require sacrifices reminiscent of wartime hardship, only modest adjustments of existing arrangements. And yet, because of politics, they appear impossible. The U.S. political system has lost the ability to accept some pain now for great gain later on.

As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak economy or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics. What was an antiquated and overly rigid political system to begin with (now about 225 years old) has been captured by money, special interests, a sensationalist media, and ideological attack groups. The result is ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia -- politics as theater -- and very little substance, compromise, or action. A can-do country is now saddled with a do-nothing political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving.

It is clever contrarianism to be in favor of sharp party politics and against worthy calls for bipartisanship. Some political scientists have long wished that U.S. political parties were more like European ones -- ideologically pure and tightly disciplined. But Europe's parliamentary systems work well with partisan parties. In them, the executive branch always controls the legislative branch, and so the party in power can implement its agenda easily. The U.S. system, by contrast, is one of shared power, overlapping functions, and checks and balances. Progress requires broad coalitions between the two major parties and politicians who will cross the aisle. That is why James Madison distrusted political parties, lumping them together with all kinds of "factions" and considering them a grave danger to the young American republic.

Progress on any major problem -- health care, Social Security, tax reform -- will require compromise from both sides. It requires a longer-term perspective. And that has become politically deadly. Those who advocate sensible solutions and compromise legislation find themselves being marginalized by their party's leadership, losing funds from special-interest groups, and being constantly attacked by their "side" on television and radio. The system provides greater incentives to stand firm and go back and tell your team that you refused to bow to the enemy. It is great for fundraising, but it is terrible for governing.

Link to the whole article

Tremendous article, AEN.

Politics has become nothing more than reality TV for a sensationalist media bent on fostering bitter partisanship for the sake of providing a circus for the masses. Such an environment makes necessary reforms virtually impossible. The most decidedly non-partisan discipline of mathematics tells us that our medicare and social security programs along with our oil dependence will bust the nation economically within a decade unless reforms are made. But there seems to be no sense of urgency among those who are sworn to serve the nation above their party.

I think what bothers me even more than the politicians being nothing more than partisan hacks who seem to do nothing more than inflate small partisan differences in an attempt to distract the people from the real problems facing the country is the fact that the people don't seem to care.

The people know what the real problems facing them on a daily basis are. They know that we've hit peak oil and that the FF energy we've relied on is about to break the bank. They know that the dollar is worthless and the inflation is rampant. They know that SS and Medicare are about to chew a hole in the nation. But they still vote for that same Business As Usual politics that has gotten us into this mess.

The only candidate who even tried to address any of the real problems facing the country was immediately labled a loon by the media, and the people bought it. Then they went right into the "he said/she said" reality TV that this campaign has become.

I don't give a shit what Obama's preacher said. I want to know how America is going to sustain itself with any semblance of an economy in the next 20 years.