CHOOSE THE FORM OF YOUR GRIDLOCK.

Outside the Beltway's Steven Taylor might be questioning the cult of the presidency.  "At any rate, the notion that complex policy issues can be summarized effectively in two-minute blocks is absurd and always has been."  I suppose when a presidential candidate offers An Agenda it is for the same reason that an economist offers An Interest Rate Forecast: it is because people expect him to do so.  I thought that was a Ken Galbraith witticism, couldn't verify it, but his "make astrology look respectable" will serve.

He's a political scientist, and there's something in the mind-set of political scientists that they want governments to accomplish something, and it is to the absence of accomplishment that he turns.

Indeed, save for general outlines, campaigns aren’t as much about complex policy discussions as I would like to be the case.

It is as if we reduce done general policy directions to two groups that have symbols and labels and choose one.

Also: given the US system of separated powers and the various exigencies of US bicameral, a president really doesn’t know what exact policy agenda they can pursue until all the pieces are in place post-election and even then, they only have two years before a likely reset of those conditions.

If we want a system wherein a party leader can campaign on specific policy goals that they likely can implement, we need to change to a parliamentary system.

The debate last night was not about detailed policy disagreements and never was going to be. It was about trying to show the public the leadership options at their disposal and hitting on mostly general policy preferences along the way.

I'm an econ guy, even in retirement, and I've long been skeptical about "complex policy discussions" and about getting stuff done.  "I'll leave it to political scientists to parse the relative merits of divided governments, U.S. style, that might not be able to accomplish much when gridlock prevails, or unified governments, Canadian-style, that can reverse course when a new coalition takes place. But isn't a strengthening executive the outcome of a default position among opinion leaders that Expertise. Is. Best?"  I propose to modify the fourth paragraph as "If we want a system wherein a party leader can campaign on specific policy goals that he likely can implement, he's got to build big majorities in Congress."  That hasn't happened since Lyndon Johnson got a friendly House and Senate and civil-rights minded Republicans to go along, which is to say, there was a lot of agreement on what the national government ought to be doing.

The same sort of challenge happens with parliamentary governments.  Governing coalitions happen because no one party is able to build that sort of majority, and as soon as a member of the coalition chokes on the compromises, you start over.  There was wisdom in Ronald Reagan saying government is the problem.  It's not that governments are dangerous per se, it is that asking more of it than it is capable leads to, well, the kind of discontent that has Donald Trump in a position to be sworn in as president again.