Creeping paralysis

Politicians debate non-issues. They strike up extreme positions so that compromise is ruled out and critical decisions cannot be made. They have their constituencies to protect, so the urgent task of dealing with the economic crisis at hand cannot be undertaken. The opposition decides to oppose anything the government says, hoping that gridlock will yield to it political dividends.The head of state looks indecisive and out of touch, unable to provide the leadership needed to lift the prevailing paralysis. Many describe the system as rudderless and broken, having lost the capacity to deal with 21st century realities.
If you thought we were describing India here you would only be half-right, because it also characterises the self-styled leader of the free world, the United States. With the US Congress agreeing at the last minute to raise its $14.3 trillion debt ceiling it has barely staved off defaulting on its debt, a fate we associate with Third World nations or lately Greece. But the deal merely kicked the can down the road. Legislators giddy with the potion they imbibed at tea parties have forced spending cuts that threaten US recovery, while not doing much to solve long-term budget problems and put the US on a path to fiscal rectitude. No wonder markets have hardly been enthused by the deal, stitched together at the last minute.
While American grandstanding about being the one indispensable nation — leading the charge of a globalising world — may have had some traction in the 1990s, it has ceased to have any relevance since. The steepest decline in American prestige took place during the Bush years, and President Obama doesn't look like he has the wherewithal to reverse the trend. Overleveraging of credit led to a housing bubble in the US and then to a full-blown financial crisis that enveloped the world in 2008. Even before that, feckless spending policies without any attempt to bridge budget deficits undermined the value of the dollar, the world's reserve currency.
America's record on climate change, a problem that threatens the world, is appalling. Paradoxically it is the world's indispensable nation when it comes to global warming — both because it has the world's highest emissions and the technological capacity to tackle the threat if it were to come up with a plan. But the US refuses to undertake any executive action that would curb emissions (at least the Europeans tried), sometimes passing the blame onto a minnow like India. Confronted with a globalising world it has in fact beaten a surly retreat, created scapegoats, thrown up the ramparts and in general looked bereft of ideas.