Washington doesn’t work, as we know. But the harsher reality is that Washington can’t realistically make itself work. The governing structure is legal quicksand, allowing any naysayer to block almost anything. Perhaps worse, the political culture has settled into a downward spiral of failure, in which parties compete, not by getting things done, but by blaming the other side. Blocking change provides a comfortable living for thousands of interest groups, and allows the political parties to take turns in power without ever achieving anything: “First you fail, then I fail.”
 
Here’s what’s happening in the last days of the lame duck Congress. Expediting permits for transmission lines to access renewable energy sources is essential to address climate change and good for business. These permitting reforms were teed up by a deal in the summer between President Biden and Senator Manchin. But reforms are being blocked by an unholy alliance of environmental groups and Republicans:

• Environmentalists and their far-left allies on the Hill don’t like expediting permitting, and prefer to keep nearly endless permitting procedures because they give environmental groups veto power. They also object to the part of the bill that authorizes a gas pipeline across West Virginia, Senator Manchin’s home state, even though the benefits of new transmission lines vastly outweigh any harm from one pipeline.

• Republicans pounded the table for permitting reform before President Biden was elected. But they feel differently, apparently, if reform is led by two Democrats. Better to block reform than to show bipartisan agreement.

In a famous 1950’s study, “The Moral Basis of a Backward Society,” political scientist Edward Banfield described the symptoms of a failed culture—including the drive to harm others just to show your own power. Welcome to the failed culture of Washington. In this MarketWatch column, Philip Howard describes the pathologies that make it unlikely that Congress will do what’s needed to rebuild infrastructure or, indeed, fix any endemic failures of modern government. The best way forward is to take decisions out of politics and appoint a version of base-closing commissions to propose reforms. Congress can then vote on proposals that don’t have political origins.