[Describing how Congress functions:] ... the way the Founding Fathers intended—not very well. They understood that if you move too quickly, our democracy will be less responsible to the majority.
Our government is the most successful contrivance the world has ever known for preventing things from being done.
The Senate is indeed a deliberative body, and that quality serves the nation well. A slow-moving government helps us maintain a stable government. But slow moving is not the same as immobile.
When you go to our political system, I feel like it's intentionally kept in the last century. In every other facet of life, we turn to social media for instant response time, complete transparency.
We cannot wait for governments to do it all. Globalization operates on Internet time. Governments tend to be slow moving by nature, because they have to build political support for every step.
I confess to a prejudice against officialism and a dread of bureaucracy.
What most surprises me about Brazil is the extent of the difficulties that we create for ourselves. We create a lot of legislation to control the Brazilian state itself, that this ends up meaning that things don't go with the speed any head of government would like.
Democracy is slow … A king can always outrun a congressman.
Globalization has genuinely drained power away from national politicians and people feel it. People in our fast digital age are also frustrated with the comparably slow democratic processes. Many young people - and some old people - want to know, Why does everything take so long? Why can't someone just decide and then move forward?
Democracy is a slow and complex process …. Democracy is counter-intuitive. Democracy takes time to learn. It takes years or even decades to take on the habits of democracy…. If you jump too fast, the wrong people come to power…. Yes democracy, but democracy slow.
Congress was designed by the Founding Fathers to move slowly, precisely to avoid the sudden panic of a one-week solution that becomes a 20-year mess.
We have far more to fear from swift than from torpid government.
It takes our government an awful lot of time to do most things competently, and that's part of the problem here.
