I’ve been listening to a lot of History of Rome – as I mentioned a few weeks back – and it has given me a chance to see the unfolding political crisis in the United States through different eyes. The American system of government, devised by intelligent and pioneering men at a particular moment in time, is a beautiful set of institutions set up to frustrate the ambitions of greedy and power-hungry men. It was set up so as to be a place of necessary compromise, of debate and rancour, but also a place that at the end of the day, deals were reached, and a middle road was trod. It was set up with the expectation that legislators would be reasonable men, that they could actually cooperate and do the nations business. But it was set up in a particular historical era to govern over very particular groups of people.

It is a system that has struggled and strained over the past few centuries but has survived pretty well into the middle of – perhaps even into the late Twentieth Century. But much as the Roman system of government became the victim of greedy and ambitious men lured in by money and corruption, so too has the American system. Much as a rot set into the Roman system as the original ideals and fears of the founders slipped ever further into the past, with escalating partisanship and stand-offs fuelled by a primary system run by extremists and the reasonability of legislators called increasingly into the question, the United States Congress may have reached a crisis point.

Does the system match the society anymore? Does it reflect and accomodate the political realities of a diverse and stratified society?

In the following discussion by two American historians, there is a surprising degree of pessimism when responding to the question of whether or not the government is in fact sustainable as is. And so we're left to ponder the fate of one of this planet's first and finest democratic experiments.