We’re having an entertaining campaign season, Daniel Henninger allows in the Wall Street Journal, but the US' fundamental political system is in deep trouble: “It’s an open question whether we have one, or are losing the one we’ve got.” He finds a microcosm in the World Trade Center rebuilding effort, “arguably the greatest political and bureaucratic fiasco in the history of the world.”
Henninger finds a stat in the probe (“19 different governmental entities from every level of government each laying claim to some component of the overall project”) that’s “eerily” like the malfunction described by the 9/11 commission—and concludes that “the terrorists will be dead of old age before this project is finished.” What’s the upshot? America’s “can-do tradition is losing ground to can’t-possibly-do.” (More World Trade Center stories.)