If what Friedman says he’s picking up is real, then I think he’s misdiagnosing it. Political gridlock isn’t new in America — it’s an American trademark. No one used to a parliamentary system with party discipline can get over the inefficiency and chaos of the American system. (This is its strength of course.)

The new features of the American system are all on the economic side: Argentinian budgeting, Putinist crony capitalism, the sliding dollar, a retreat from trade leadership, massive bailouts of state-run enterprises. If I were the “businessman” Friedman quotes, these are the sorts of things I’d worry about, not health care reform.