Don't Like the Dysfunctional State of Politics? Blame Joe Biden

Blame Joe Biden.Once upon a time, Joe Biden labored under the charming delusion that he might someday be elected president of these United States. His ambitions came to nothing, but in the service of them, he set loose an enormously destructive force in American politics, procedural maximalism, that has hobbled our institutions and set the nation on a course of fundamental governmental dysfunction.When the definitive history of American politics in the 20th century is written the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court will be understood not as an instance of excessive partisanship but as a transformative event, one equal in significance to the assassination of President John Kennedy or Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign.What people remember of that episode is Senator Edward Kennedy's infamous speech describing Robert Bork's America, "a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens."  Continue reading...