SINGAPORE — While Egypt has had too little democracy and is moving toward more, California has had too much democracy and is moving toward less. The common mean point they should arrive at is democracy that delivers good government — not mushy "governance."
For decades, "government" has been demonized. Ronald Reagan famously said "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." But Reagan was only the most eloquent spokesman for this zeitgeist. He did not manufacture it. Following an explosion of government programs in the 1960s, a belief developed in the minds of key American policymakers that the best government is the least government.
Reagan captured this assumption well, recalling the sixth-century B.C. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu's famous words: "Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish: too much handling will spoil it."