Absent that, no ... we will just keep muddling through and things will get worse. In reality, various think tanks, universities and foundations have already done much of that analysis. The United States truly is a laboratory in democracy. With 50 semi-sovereign states, five territories, one federal district, more than 3,100 counties or equivalents and nearly 36,000 municipal or township governments, we have tried numerous approaches to tackling the challenges that face state and local governments. Some have worked, some haven't--but we could learn from them all if we had the will to do so.

And there's the riub. A bitterly divided, polarized America serves the agenda of groups like the Koch network, which is heavily invested in the fossil fuels industry. By bringing white nationalists and other extremists, who had previously been marginalized by both parties, into the G.O.P., these groups are able to stop further regulation and to continue environmental policies that can only be described as catastrophic. If both parties were interested in the common good, we would be phasing out of that industry as rapidly as possible and aggressively moving to repair the damage that we have already caused.

I wish I could give you a better answer than that, but I can't. The modern Republican Party showed its true colors when it derailed the congressional attempt at police reform. The status quo works for them.