Fixing American Government - Jeffrey R Orenstein Ph D - Bog

American government is broken. This is an instruction manual on how to fix it. Gridlock, hyper-partisanship and unlimited campaign spending by self-interested billionaires and interest groups have replaced rational public policy making, bi-partisanship and grassroots campaigns. Worse yet, too many politicians show little or no respect for the democratic process and for voters. The costs of this are enormous. We have gridlock and ineffective government that can't deal adequately with a growing set of foreign and domestic challenges. It also depresses voter turnout, discourages good people from running for political office and leads to apathy, lack of civic IQ and a dangerous civic cynicism. This book is a non-partisan analysis of how this came about and how we as citizens can fix it by enhancing elements of democracy already in our political system. It is a must-read for political activists, office-holders and would-be office holders, political pundits and bloggers, journalists on the politics and government beat, campaign consultants and anybody who wants to know why American government doesn't work very well and how we can start to fix it.