According to a 2020 survey, about two-thirds of Americans share basic values—including truthfulness, treating people equally, respecting common interests over party affiliation, and a desire for leaders to bring Americans together. Instead, the research group More in Common found, this “exhausted majority” is shoved into competing voting blocs by a relatively small number of extremists on both sides.
 
The disproportionate influence of extremists stems in part from a definitional bait-and-switch.

Sometimes it feels like American culture is going through the spin cycle of a washing machine. Facts aren’t facts (“stop the steal”). Free speech means speech codes. Nondiscrimination means discrimination. Rights are a sword against others’ rights. Achievement is unfair. Human judgment is judgmental. Individuality is identity. Tradition is suspect. The rule of law is a minefield of legal risks, not a framework for social trust. Freedom is compliance.
 
Finding our balance is hard, especially when centrifugal forces have spun many Americans into opposing camps that loathe each other.

Americans now know the Democratic and Republican nominees for president. But there are eight months to go before the election. How will the media fill that time?

We have a suggestion: Let’s talk about how to fix broken government. What’s needed, say, to deal with infrastructure, or homelessness, or healthcare red tape, or, especially, lousy schools?
 
Fixing each of those areas of public failure is not rocket science, in our view. What’s required, however, is to change the operating system—to re-empower people in charge to make decisions instead of slogging through red tape.

Trust in America’s social institutions is at all-time lows. Distrust is like sand in the gears, causing people to question decisions and act defensively. Red tape grows in order to avoid argument: “The rule made me do it.” Institutions lose empathy as well as efficiency. Distrust grows. It’s a downward spiral.
 
We tend to think of institutions such as schools, hospitals and workplaces as inanimate objects. But institutions are the beating heart of a free society—not only providing virtually all products and services, but providing the framework for each of us to earn our livelihood and fulfill our professional ambitions.

The world order is in danger – with major conflicts raging or threatened on three continents. America needs to be strong.   
 
Instead, as RAND defense expert Michael J. Mazarr explains, the Department of Defense is “overgrown with rules [and] bureaucracy,” and “more concerned with following procedure, preserving institutional habits, and hoarding power and resources than generating positive outcomes.” It is imperative that “the United States...overhaul its defense institutions.”

It is also difficult for America to be strong abroad while weak at home.

Trump carried every county in Iowa except one. What accounts for the Trump juggernaut?

Our take is that all his rivals, Biden included, promise to be better leaders of the established order. Trump embodies rejection, even disdain, for the establishment.
 
For years now, Americans have seen that nothing much works as it should. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens explains that Trump is riding “a wave of pessimism.” Referring to Alana Newhouse’s writing, Stephens notes that “brokenness has become the defining feature of much of American life.”

Do you feel comfortable about our society, or the state of the world? Most Americans don’t. Nor do they trust the institutions of society, and especially not government. What’s most unsettling is that people in charge don’t actually seem to be in charge. Bad schools stay bad; transmission lines languish on the drawing boards; public agencies are run by the unions, for the unions.
 
An overwhelming sense of futility helps explain the popularity of populist candidates. You can practically feel the ground shaking, but Washington insiders stare wide-eyed at the failures and stay the course.

On the eve of a presidential election year, it feels like American democracy is a ship without a keel. Nothing much works as it should, and people in charge don’t seem able to steer towards solutions—in schools, universities, healthcare, at the border, and, worst, Washington itself. A sense of powerlessness is pervasive, pushing alienated Americans towards populist candidates.
 
Good leaders alone cannot fix this condition, because the powerlessness is caused by system failure.