Unresolved

It's New Year's -- and America hasn't kept its promises

It's time again to make grand resolutions. But the problem with New Year's promises, as everyone knows, is that it's always easier to make them than it is to keep them. As it goes for you and me, so it goes for government. This is where America finds itself at year's end: with promises unkept.

Blame the economy. Yes, it's given us plenty to be thankful for: a rare triad of low unemployment, low inflation, and fast growth. But the healthy hum of the economy has also drowned out any real debate about where the country should be going. It has bred complacency.

In truth, this is an important moment, one that presents stark choices. The nation finds itself on the cusp of a new political era. The federal budget, for the first time in a generation, is about to climb out of deficit. That, along with the end of the Cold War, means America is entering waters not charted since the end of World War II. This is a historic time of new fiscal and social possibilities, when fundamental questions should be open for debate. How do we build the economy without leaving the least fortunate farther and farther behind? How can we better protect the sick and vulnerable? How do we restore trust in government?

Our political parties have been confused and inarticulate on these questions. They no longer know what they should stand for. Record numbers of Americans now call themselves "independents."

Meanwhile, politicians seem content to trade small barbs, ignoring the wholesale structural changes both parties have promised -- and the country needs.

Health care for everyone. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, leaders of both parties acknowledged a health care crisis in America. Clinton's plan was sunk, but the problem has not gone away. More than 40 million Americans still lack health insurance. In many cases, that means families bankrupted by illness or going without treatment at all. Despite some recent progress, the US is still the only rich industrialized country that does not provide health insurance for all its children. How can politicians kiss babies when they campaign and not tackle this problem when they win?

An end to poverty. The American psyche is still haunted by the loss in Vietnam, but what about the war on poverty? President Johnson fired the first shots more than 30 years ago, and we are still losing. One in seven Americans now lives below the poverty line -- about $16,000 for a family of four. Year in and year out, leaders in both parties speak eloquently of the need to give economically struggling people a way out; they proclaim that the American dream is supposed to be an option for everyone. Yet nobody has yet proposed a clear and focused strategy for making this promise a reality.

A government that can't be bought. Most politicians spend almost as much time raising money as they do governing. Big money is one of the most corrosive influences on our political system, giving an advantage to the rich -- who can whisper in a senator's ear at a posh fundraiser -- and drowning out everyone else. For years politicians have promised to reform a campaign-finance system that makes them whores for big donors, but nothing gets done. The McCain-Feingold bill, which would help restrict the flow of dollars, is set for a vote this spring. The bill is a start, but it has already been watered down to near-pointlessness.

The continued failure of campaign-finance reform, despite clear public support for it, is a sign of trouble in our political system. It's tempting to say that big interests have defied the popular will, but the American electorate may be just as responsible. Voters say the system stinks, and yet they hardly use their own power; again and again they return incumbents to office. If politicians truly felt their jobs were at risk, campaign-finance and many other reforms would soon be the law of the land.

And in that sense, our greatest unfulfilled promise -- a gift we have freely chosen to deny ourselves -- may be democracy itself.

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