American Politics and Voter Apathy

We should thank America’s foremost European correspondent, William Pfaff, for his sobering account of our current political morass (“A World Bereft of Big Idea,” Commentary, April 15).

The upcoming presidential election is our most important since 1932, but there is not one new idea being proffered from any quarter. Since the death of the New Deal ideology, our constitutional system has entered a state of illegitimacy.

Pfaff correctly asserts that the parliamentary systems of the Western European democracies are superior to our own when considering the challenges ahead of us. Furthermore, he concedes that modern European social economics is truly progressive in contrast with our backward form of capitalism.

If as a scholar of old world upheaval, Pfaff envisions a revolutionary future for us in the new world, it is because there is much work to do! Indeed we have entered an era which historically speaking bears a great resemblance to the troubled decades preceding the Civil War.

Although another such national calamity is hardly inevitable, it still remains to be seen whether the American people can muster the necessary conviction of reform and then preside over it with grace.

COLLIN RING

Claremont