Making Our Democracy Functional

[Commentary] Former President Jimmy Carter told Der Spiegel in July that “America has no functioning democracy.” He was speaking in the context of national security surveillance, but I think his statement should get us all thinking about the state of the union in light of the soap-opera Congressional antics that have shut down huge parts of our government. A country beset by serious challenges to our economy, our competitiveness, our growing gap of income inequality, our embarrassing slippage in the global rankings on everything from infant mortality to life expectancy, educational attainment, and healthcare, and our deteriorating physical infrastructure, responds by doing . . . what? By shutting down the government! But it is more than personalities or the daily ups-and-downs of politics that brings us to the brink. Our problems run deeper: the outrageous role of money that has poisoned the political bloodstream, gerrymandering, the senate filibuster, and the decline of media and the civic dialogue. Huge media conglomerates have gobbled up hundreds of independent newspaper and broadcast outlets, more often than not cutting the newsroom staffs in order to finance the heavy costs of the merger or purchase transaction. Wall Street’s bottom line has displaced the community’s public interest as local media disappears. Diversity opinions, indeed whole diversity populations, go uncovered. Public affairs are pushed aside by an “If it bleeds, it leads” mentality. To make a bad situation worse, years of wrong-headed decisions by government—especially by the Federal Communications Commission -- blessed this merger-mania and went on from there to eliminate most of the public interest obligations that broadcasters were expected to carry out in return for their free use of the public airwaves.