The tunnel vision of punters like Clark (see previous post) isn't the only sight problem afflicting economists. Some are hopelessly short sighted.

Checks and balances are all very well, but sometimes you have to wonder. The first session of the 110th Congress came to a close last week in a disorderly crush of half-baked legislation. It was the end of a year that gave the new Democratic leadership little to boast about. Seizing control of House and Senate in the 2006 elections, the Democrats had big ideas about holding the Bush administration to account, forcing a prompt withdrawal from Iraq and radically realigning the government’s domestic priorities. Measured against those early promises, their record has been dismal. . .

The Democrats promised too much and now look foolish, but whose fault is the impasse – and who, if anyone, will pay the political price? The constitution is implicated, of course. It provides for this kind of thing, by equipping the president with veto power. The Senate’s rules on filibusters throw another spanner in the works. (You need 60 votes in the Senate to stop a filibuster; the Democrats have 51.) This past year, President Bush has used the veto threat constantly and there have been a record 62 filibusters. At times like this, the mightiest nation on the planet renders itself ungovernable. It is an unsettling thing to watch.

Politics is not the same as governance. The Democrats made a lot of political promises, but only the most naive thought much would come of those promises since that's not how well governed nations work. A bare majority in congress, strongest in the lower house, isn't a mandate from the people or sufficient power to ride rough shod over them.

If the majority is sustained and increased, and if the executive branch also comes along in time, and if it all endures long enough to percolate up to the judiciary and down to the bureaucracy, then great change can happen. A single off year election won't do it, and that's a good thing since a well governed nation should be steady, able to hold its mud, unlike less continent nations that fly off into disaster with some regularity.

Many argue cogently that the US needs to be even more balanced. In recent decades too much power has been seized by the central government, which isn't competent to do so much for so many. Indeed, the concept of subsidiarity - governing at the most local level - is increasingly demanded by British and European localities. They want their own governments rather than being ruled, poorly, from afar.

When it works, divided government works well. Bill Clinton made common cause with a Republican Congress to pass welfare reform (in an election year, to boot). But in this system, intransigence on one side is enough to make everything stop.

As it should. If the people adamantly oppose new legislation then their representatives ought to make everything stop. It isn't as if Clinton's welfare reform stuff hadn't been under discussion for a long time and it isn't as if it didn't have huge support with the people, and it isn't as if it wasn't a very good idea, the correction of some previous bad legislation that made life uglier for those least able to bear it.

Earlier this month, the Democratic senator Charles Schumer said that “the only good news out of this obstructionism ... is that [Republicans] are building our case to get more votes in the Senate ... That message is going to resonate. You watch.” But Americans are not watching. They are either too bored, or too disgusted.

Actually, they have a different idea of what the federal government ought to do. It isn't supposed to have its nose in every tent. Dissatisfaction with the federal government is due in some part to its increased activism: it's un-American as many folks see it. Of all the errors Bush made this may be his greatest. Big government conservatism is no more popular than big government illiberalism (I don't know what to call them. They aren't liberal or progressive, or even left in any meaningful sense.)

The federal government is like Hollywood in a sense. They make too many big budget extravaganzas that bomb at the box office. They haven't made a good movie in quite a while and are losing out to YouTube and small budget independents. I suspect that this too is a phase, a low point in some cycle, and that after the social mind mutters to itself for a while and some new faces appear they'll reward some new extravaganza with approval. In the meantime the gov ought to do less. What the incontinent call gridlock the more thoughtful see as a necessary and desirable pause to reflect and learn. Politics is impatient and short sighted but governance is steadier and keeps an eye on the road ahead.