this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Because they have multi-party elections, this is probably the single biggest root cause that impacts all levels of government activity and accountability.
Yeah, they don't really have any sense of collaboration/compromise with people of other political opinions. To get something passed at the federal level, you need to have the president, senate, and house all on board, and if any of those are not politically aligned, any motion will fail. The periods in recent history where these have all been in alignment are simply a very small fraction of the time. And considering how long it takes to get something to pass, you end up with very little getting done during these precious few periods in time.
And on top of that, it is far more common that you see American politicians breaking from their own party to torpedo a large bill than it is to work with another party to get it passed.
It wasn't always this way by the way - a lot of people attribute this to extreme right-wing figures during the 90s like Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, etc. who promoted hyper-polarisation and a total demonisation of anything that didn't align with their anti-progress counter-culture. And this phenomenon has continued to evolve over the past 30-40 years both in far-right media and political representation that you see today.