America’s Growing Political Impotence

First-world counties have governments that work. Perhaps imperfectly, and perhaps not in the most economically efficient way, but they successfully fulfill their responsibilities. But what happens when government not only fails to perform as expected, but its execution is inept to the point of being an embarrassment? To invoke an old image, the trains not only fail to run on time, but few move at all and when they do operate, they are accident-prone and chronically late while often arriving at the wrong stations.