“The way to preserve great wealth is to buy political protection of that wealth. The way to protect great political leverage is to grease the machinery of governance with cash.” – C H Smith

I confess that reading Francis Fukuyama’s latest cri du coeur in Foreign Affairs, America in Decay: The Sources of Political Dysfunction made me think Mr. Fukuyama has either been reading or channeling Of Two Minds.com , as his brutal assessment of America’s terminal political dysfunction reflects many of the themes I’ve been hammering on for the past 9 years.

Unfortunately for his readers, Mr. Fukuyama stops short of identifying the key dynamic in America’s dysfunction: the exhaustion of Central Planning and centralized government as a “solution” for every ill. Despite his failure to cross the goal line and put truly incisive points on the scoreboard, Mr. Fukuyama does the nation a valuable service in cogently describing the dynamics of our terminal political dysfunction.

Fukuyama describes the inevitable end-game of money capturing the political machinery of the central state: every big-bucks lobby/constituency has veto powerover Federal policies and budget priorities. In effect, every lobby can veto any initiative that crimps their power or share of Federal swag.

As a result, any serious reform that causes financial-political pain is soon reduced by entrenched interests to a toothless public-relations shell: the shell will still carry an idealistic-sounding label (“financial reform,” etc.) but the machinery of governance is unchanged. Continue reading →