Lessons from How Rome Fell

A while ago, I finished reading Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell. While there are far too many inane comparisons between the Late Roman Empire and the U.S., this summary of Goldsworthy's thesis seems appropriate (italics mine):

That is not to say that the latter emperors were more selfish, but simply that they could never be as secure. Many may have had the best of intentions to rule well, but the government of the empire became first and foremost about keeping the emperor in power - and at lower levels, about the individual advantage of bureaucrats and officers.

The Late Roman Empire was not designed to be an efficient government, but to keep the emperor in power and to benefit the members of the administration. Many of these could enjoy highly successful careers by the standards of the day without ever being effective in the role that they were theoretically supposed to perform. Sheer size prevented rapid collapse or catastrophe. Its weakness was not obvious, but this only meant that collapse could come in sudden, dramatic stages, such as the loss of the African provinces to the Vandals. Gradually, the empire's institutions rotted and became less and less capable of dealing with any crisis, but still did not face serious competition. Lost wars were damaging, but the damage was not fatal to the empire itself....

...Long decline was the fate of the Roman Empire. In the end, it may well have been 'murdered' by barbarian invaders, but these struck at a body made vulnerable by prolonged decay.

Goldsworthy lays out in detail how the lust for power became so overwhelming that the Republic could no longer function well; after repeated squabbles, the Late Roman Empire just didn't have the resources to respond to threats (to put this in perspective, at the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal wiped out roughly 50,000 Romans in an afternoon, yet Rome recovered and became the sole Mediterranean power; Rome fell several centuries later to about 7,000 Goths). So Monday we read this by the Krugman:

The fact is that one of our two great political parties has made it clear that it has no interest in making America governable, unless it's doing the governing. And that party now controls one house of Congress, which means that the country will not, in fact, be governable without that party's cooperation -- cooperation that won't be forthcoming...

On one side, Republicans oppose just about everything that might reduce structural deficits: they demand that the Bush tax cuts be made permanent while demagoguing efforts to limit the rise in Medicare costs, which are essential to any attempts to get the budget under control. On the other, the G.O.P. opposes anything that might help sustain demand in a depressed economy -- even aid to small businesses, which the party claims to love.

Right now, in particular, Republicans are blocking an extension of unemployment benefits -- an action that will both cause immense hardship and drain purchasing power from an already sputtering economy. But there's no point appealing to the better angels of their nature; America just doesn't work that way anymore.

And opposition for the sake of opposition isn't limited to economic policy. Politics, they used to tell us, stops at the water's edge -- but that was then...

How does this end? Mr. Obama is still talking about bipartisan outreach, and maybe if he caves in sufficiently he can avoid a federal shutdown this spring. But any respite would be only temporary; again, the G.O.P. is just not interested in helping a Democrat govern.

My sense is that most Americans still don't understand this reality. They still imagine that when push comes to shove, our politicians will come together to do what's necessary. But that was another country.

It's hard to see how this situation is resolved without a major crisis of some kind.

I'm not even sure a crisis will be sufficient, as Steve M. notes:

...for 30 years we've had a country that's nominally democratic, but in which presidents are allowed to govern only if they're Republican or forced to defer to Republicans.

Don't think of the Democrats and Republicans as the two major political parties in a democratic system; think of the Republican Party as the U.S. equivalent of, say, the people who really run Pakistan -- the generals and members of the intelligence establishment. Pakistan has elections, but if you're elected, you're still not free to do what that crowd doesn't want you to do. Cross them and you're likely to suffer the consequences.

We don't have literal coups or assassinations (so far), but that seems to be because our authoritarian permanent government doesn't need them, and because maintaining the illusion that we're not a country run by a strongman force strengthens the Republicans in the long run. As Krugman notes (and as Zandar notes), Republicans seem able to run the country this way without attracting any scrutiny from even the most plugged-in observers. Hard to imagine when that will change, if ever.

At this point, it's typical to write some Compulsive Centrist bullshit like, "I don't see how things get better with such an ideologically driven country." Except that's bullshit. A longtime reader points us to a comment left in response to Krugman's column:

What most Americans realize is that President Obama has to move to the center.

What they don't realize is that the President has to move to the left to get there.

The screwball Repugs have moved the paradigm so far to the right, the supposedly Socialist President is now a moderate Republican.

A significant minority that is bugshit lunatic has taken over the Republican party. Until they regain their sanity, we are completely hosed. Not only won't we solve any of our long-standing problems, but we will make them worse.