Better government

This is exactly the kind of thing we need. For decades we debated "bigger government" versus "smaller government." That was ridiculous; what we needed all along was more efficient government. While we slashed the quantity of government services, quality went downhill.

If liberals are going to once again be the ones driving American progress, we need to focus on improving the quality of our bureaucracies. We need to make government effective, efficient, fast, and honest. As for conservatives, I think we can rest assured that they'll be stuck in the outdated "bigger vs. smaller government" thought paradigm for at least another couple of decades, so we'll have at least that long to push America in the direction we want.

Update: I should have noticed that Krugman published a column saying basically the same thing as this post (but better and more in depth) three days earlier.