Insight

The past few days, I have been trying to compile a list of the things that are wrong with the Clinton administration’s policy toward Haiti. It’s a daunting task.

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Commentary

Demosclerosis: The Silent Killer of American Government. By Jonathan Rauch. Times Books. 250 pp. $22.00.

“Demosclerosis,” in Jonathan Rauch’s diagnosis, is “government’s progressive loss of the ability to adapt.” Ever since World War II, he maintains, powerful underlying social forces have intersected with a structural weakness in modern democratic politics to allow entrenched interests to dominate government. This brief but sweeping book, by a contributing editor of the National Journal, is an attempt to describe and analyze those forces. Rauch’s hope is that if we cannot liberate ourselves from their grip, we can at least prevent them from choking off whatever vitality remains in American life.

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