Summer doldrums in May

It’s almost like those scenes in sci-fi movies where some alien cloud stops everyone midstep. A kind of stasis seems to have overtaken the government. With so many crises of various significance at hand—Ukraine, inflation, racist mass murders, baby formula shortages, and COVID surges, one would think the various branches of government would be in something like high gear. But it’s not, and no one seems to be concerned. Mind you, this isn’t a manifestation of a Jeffersonian (or Thoreau-vian) intent to govern best by governing least; it’s as if the so-called wheels of government have all gotten clogged up.

The U.S. Supreme Court, which used to be everyone’s model of consistently doing one’s job, is caught in an existential crisis, its authority degraded, its integrity sullied, its ethical moorings in shambles. The Court will continue to issue rulings, but its concerns are inward. No longer is it a moral compass for the country.

President Joe Biden is abroad. Hard to blame him. There is little chance of pursuing an agenda when every day seems to bring a new crisis—and all the old ones seem never to go away. Just think: In one week, the president served as national consoler in Buffalo in the face of another mass shooting and at Arlington Cemetery to mark the death of one million Americans from COVID, arms provider to Ukraine on Capitol Hill, and Similac purveyor at the White House! The presidency is always a hot seat; it must now seem like a wasps’ nest, with problems, large and small, swarming. And in the meantime, whatever passes for a legislative agenda lies like a patient etherized.