Michael Lissack “more, more, more,” and “me, me, me,” and the people in power promise any- thing to stay in power. Superfluous military bases should be closed, but not the one in my congressional district. Extravagant defense contracts should be eliminated, but not the one that keeps the local company in business and employs a thousand voters. Social programs should be cut. Which ones? Not support for the elderly, says the senator from Florida. Not support for minorities, says the senator from New York. Not support for farmers, says the senator from Iowa. Once, these various demands could be kept in check by the mechanisms of party politics. The leadership of each party could influence party mem- bers to toe the line and submerge their own local interests for the good of the party, if not the country. Then political debate and horse trading had only two voices, Democrat and Republican. Now, individual legislators are much less party loyalists and much more free agents. Congressional debate involves five hundred voices, all screaming at once, often for incompatible things. Little gets done, and the country simply can’t afford to satisfy every- one’s demands. In the political market, demand now vastly exceeds supply. The result is what has variously been called an “overload of democracy,” a “crisis of democracy,” or, nowadays, “gridlock.” America can no longer afford all the democracy it has. We can’t keep buying everyone’s votes. Excess demand must somehow be checked. But how can it be checked? If a member of the office-holding elite says no to enough demands, he will not be elected to carry out his policies. People will elect a “yes-man” instead. And if the yes-man then goes back on his promise, he won’t be reelected. It seems that so long as people are selling their votes for programs, there is nothing to check the impulse not to sell cheap. The current U.S. fiscal crisis offers an excellent example of this process in action. The magnitude of the ripoff is in fact, quite startling. In addition our safeguards (conservative political institutions with a bias for the status quo) do not adequately address the notion of missed opportunities or of the need to redirect resources to more pressing problems. And so we miss out on
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