BeanForecaster

Ok hear me out: This is the system functioning as intended. Democrats in power expand government broadly and somewhat indiscriminately, without careful regard for which policies make sense. Republicans in power do the opposite, taking a hatchet to things and trying to downsize the scope and scale of government by any means. On short timescales, this looks like utter chaos, but the American experiment has been enormously successful. How can this be? Well the thing about government is that successful initiatives, the ones that prove themselves, have quite a bit of sticking power. Over time, the healthy parts of government survive. This is why America has coexisting social safety nets and private enterprise. Neither party supports this combination on their own, but it *really* works. Eventually, political fluctuations may be so violent that cracks in the system start to appear, but the party whiplash of American politics is *the* feature, not a bug. The main failure mode is likely one party remaining in power for too long, as without each other, our parties govern unsustainably. Checks and balances do not always happen in real time, but when you zoom out beyond one electoral cycle, we have a beautiful thing going.