That raises a second and related question, that of the character of the political parties. Like Congress, these, too, are slowly sinking into irrelevance. This is partly by design, the work of well-intentioned “reformers” who broke up the power of the parties in an effort to “democratize” them without understanding that this would effectively destroy them as functioning institutions. The parties also are diminished by the partisan media (both flavors) that make war on them (the “establishment”), both because they are power competitors and because doing so makes for a compelling storyline: We the People vs. the wicked elites is the theme on MSNBC as much as it is on Fox News and right-wing talk radio. Without parties and other mediating institutions, naked demagoguery almost inevitably becomes the dominant mode of politics.

Are there other institutions that might provide these mediating functions? The churches, which ought to be at the center of our community life, have shown themselves to be extraordinarily bad at politics, and when they have engaged actively with public affairs they have more often debased themselves in the pursuit of power than they have elevated the public discourse, profaning the church rather than sanctifying the political world. The universities fail in almost exactly the same way: Scholars in the public sphere more often abandon or pervert their own intellectual standards than they bring light and rigor to the muddle of politics, and the promises of social-media celebrity and punditry careers have seduced many academics into acting as apologists and marketing men for the worst kind of demagoguery.