Brilliant as Thomas L. Friedman is, eloquent as he is, he seems to have forgotten an iron law of political life first articulated 70 years ago:
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
Friedman keeps wishing for our political leaders to do the right thing, to resolve America's problems fairly and intelligently. In this past Sunday's New York Times, Friedman wished for a centrist third party to capture the public's imagination and seize the reins of power. Four days earlier, Friedman wished for a single visionary patriot to win the public's support and thereby vanquish the forces of partisanship, public ignorance and the powerful interest groups that now dominate our body politic.
These wishes are squandering Friedman's talents and energy. They won't bear fruit. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not in Friedman's lifetime, nor in anyone else's. Not until he or some other opinion leader comes up with a plan -- a realistic plan -- for changing how our politicians think and act.
This sounds like a tall order, but it is doable. The first step is fairly easy: to recognize precisely why our politicians do all the destructive things they do. Most of all, politicians care about winning elections. And the way our elections work today, all a typical politician has to do to win is to convince 50.1 percent of voters that the other party is more untrustworthy, incompetent or corrupt than his own.
That task is clearly more feasible than convincing 50.1 percent of voters that his own party has the best solutions to budget deficits, taxes, energy, health care, national security and so on. Winning that argument on even one critical issue would be daunting. Just think of all the public confusion, magical thinking and lies that infect the national discussion of how to balance the budget, how to fix our broken health care system or how to slash our dependence on foreign oil.
Why, then, is Friedman chagrined that the vast majority of our politicians work harder at undercutting one another than at solving our country's mounting troubles? Indeed, Friedman's calls for politicians from opposing parties to work together solving our problems is somewhat like urging two prizefighters, while competing for a championship, to stop throwing punches -- and start waltzing.
To be fair, Friedman once hinted at how to sharply reduce destructive partisanship. This past March, he advocated "alternative voting," in which voters rank the candidates they prefer in order, a first choice, a second choice and so on.
There were only three things wrong with this proposal: 1) Friedman described it in one paragraph that only people already familiar with the idea could have grasped the significance of -- an unusual lapse for Friedman. 2) He has never raised the subject again. 3) An election in which voters rank the candidates might make it difficult for any candidate to win just by blasting the opposing party, but it would still not give politicians the courage to tackle controversial issues honestly. For instance, in the U.S. city that has used this election method the longest, the San Francisco Chronicle has lambasted the city's lawmakers for lacking "the thought, expertise . . . vision [or] . . . leadership" necessary to resolve the city's long-term problems.
What, then, would motivate politicians to work out sensible solutions to the toughest issues? To find a realistic answer requires looking at ideological adversaries who have succeeded at that job. A recent blog of ours did just that.
Friedman may not agree with the election reforms proposed in that blog. Fine. Then he can propose his own reforms. To present a realistic reform, though, he would have to evaluate the various ways of structuring elections and understand how that structure drives virtually everything politicians do. But Friedman has shown little interest in this subject. Why else would he have written about it only once -- last March -- and inarticulately at that? That's not his style.
The thing is, Tom, until you devote your powerful intellect to that subject, you will just be wishing for a better future. Why settle for that when you can actually help make it happen?
Sol Erdman is president of the Center for Collaborative Democracy. Lawrence Susskind is director of the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program. They are co-authors of The Cure for Our Broken Political Process: How We Can Get Our Politicians to Resolve the Issues Tearing Our Country Apart.