Steve Griffin at Balkinization:
We have finished yet another election cycle without the major parties and candidates recognizing and addressing the most important issue facing the U.S. today – the necessity of fundamental constitutional and political reform. Whatever you think about the major parties, however you regarded the candidates – none of them foregrounded reforming the process of governance. Instead, the candidates and parties focused overwhelmingly on criticizing each other and promising to deliver particular policies. Not that this is strange but just suppose the varied problems the country faces stem at least in part from not being able to adopt any policy at all through legislative process (think immigration). That might direct attention to the fact that it is fruitless to make policy promises without simultaneously changing the decision making process itself to make those promises easier to debate and enact.
I do tend to bury the lede, so let me state up front:
The first quarter of the 21st century will be remembered as a time in which as political process reform grew ever more popular with the public, elites of all stripes, especially party elites, grew ever more resistant to considering it. The result was (is) a crisis of legitimacy in American government.