Democracy’s dilemma: Why aren’t we solving our biggest problems?

Here is a question to be posed to the candidates seeking the presidency, in particular, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Why does it seem impossible to resolve the most important challenges facing the nation?

Throughout American history and especially in times of crisis, the nation has been able to come together. Today, that is unlikely. Sixty-plus years ago in the Senate, when Sens. Lyndon Johnson (D-Texas), Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.) and Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) served, and 40 years ago when Rep. Tip O’Neill was Speaker of the House, despite huge policy differences, partisanship could be defeated.

LBJ contributed to Dirksen’s reelection campaign. O’Neill and President Ronald Reagan could have drinks in the White House. 

Today, there is a negative probability that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and President Biden would share anything. And should Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) become majority leader after the November elections, be assured that his relations with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will be anything but warm.

Consider immigration, energy, gun safety and defense. 

Regarding immigration, while the numbers are not completely accurate, about 10.5 million illegal entries reside in the U.S., with more pouring over the border every day. Yet Congress has not acted in a serious way regarding immigration policy since 1986. Can no one produce a commonsense immigration policy that can garner a majority vote in both houses of Congress?

The same applies to energy. Why is the nation incapable of drafting a realistic energy policy that creates a strategy and path forward that transitions from fossil fuels based on a full understanding of all of the issues in this process? That means technologies such as nuclear power, carbon sequestration and clean energy have major roles.

Similarly, the nation has a gun problem. Certain guns have no place in society along with large magazines that can be easily converted to fire hundreds of rounds a minute. Is it not sensible to limit these weapons of war?

Yet, each of these measured approaches has not been achievable thus far. And the problems do not stop there. 

Take national security and defense. The current national defense strategy, for which the nation will spend about $900 billion over the next year, is not “achievable, affordable or ‘mannable,'” meaning sufficient people cannot be recruited to fill the needs of the services. The strategy calls for the U.S. to compete and deter, and if deterrence fails, defeat or prevail, over China which is the “pacing threat,” and Russia, the “acute threat” as well as Iran, North Korea and extremism.  

Competing has never been well defined. Neither China nor Russia has been deterred from expanding their influence and, in Russia’s case, from invading Georgia and Ukraine twice. And anyone who thinks a thermonuclear war can be won needs his or her head examined.  

Because of uncontrolled real annual cost growth of 5-7 percent for every item from precision weapons to pencils to people and inflation, and the corrosive effects of continuing budget resolutions that impose huge inefficiencies, perhaps another $90 billion is needed just to keep up. And the fact is that the three largest branches of the military are failing to recruit sufficient people to fill the ranks.

Why? This is the dilemma of democracy. The United States is incapable of finding rational solutions, or for that matter any solutions to its most pressing problems at home. Abroad, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are beyond anyone’s control outside the belligerents. 

Biden argues that the greatest challenge facing the U.S. and its friends and partners is the cosmic battle between democracy and autocracy. Sadly, the president is wrong. The supreme fight today is whether democracy can provide a suitable government for the governed. It is clear from history that autocracies never seem to end well. Remember the Soviet Union?

Regarding democracy, while Greece and Rome failed, not until the last decade or so did the prospect of failed and failing democratic governments become so serious. One could joke about Italy and France having governments that failed on a constantly recurring basis. But today in the U.S., it is no laughing matter. And that Biden and Trump are the best we can find to fill the highest office in the land is the most powerful critique of all.

What to do? No one knows. The first step must be recognition on the part of most Americans that we are close to or in extremis. This political crisis largely stems from extremes of left and right.  

Until that can be fixed at the ballot box, Americans need to worry.

Harlan Ullman is a senior adviser at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of the “shock and awe” military doctrine. His 12th book, “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD:  How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large,” is available on Amazon. He can be reached on Twitter @harlankullman.