The beauty and danger of the American political system is the rigidity of its structure. One of the country's greatest assets isn't the Constitution but the widely-shared belief that the Constitution is a revered document that should be rarely changed.

I find it amazing that in Constitutional law the pre-eminent question is still, "What did the founders intend?" rather than "Is this 217-year-old document still relevant today?" Advertising has created in many of us an almost visceral sense that "new is better," and it applies to everything except the structure of our government. It is the oldest and the shortest written constitution of any government in the world, and this is a source of pride, not embarrassment.

I'm not saying this is bad. Overall, it's been beautiful. The principle of checks and balances, the set-up of the Supreme Court, different term lengths for the House and Senate--they have all worked out well...for the most part.

But the danger inherent in our political system is that it makes long-term thinking, anything over 10 years, undesirable and often politically damaging. Not only because politicians have to run for re-election every six, four, and two years, but the system of checks and balances that serves us so well also makes it hard for a few political figures to "take one for the team", i.e. have enough power to make an unpopular but necessary decision that most people would oppose.

This hasn't been a problem until the past twenty years because we didn't have any looming long-term problems back then. The social security crisis was in its infancy. There was no threat of a worldwide oil shortage (as there is now, although the date ranges from the next five years to the next 50+). But the problem now is that these issues require a much earlier starting point to deal with successfully.

For example, the current system of waiting until the public considers an issue important and lowers the political penalty for acting on it would not give us enough time to respond to an energy crisis. There's no magic alternative fuel waiting in storage that the government or private sector can invest a ton of money into and bring to the market in a few years. My hypothesis is that this would take decades, not years.

And the sacrifice we'll have to pay to support the social security system in a decade is monumental by any account, but much more so if we wait until 2009 rather than 2004. But raising the gas tax by $0.50 a gallon or slashing Social Security benefits, even if absolutely necessary, would be political suicide today. Better to wait until the problem becomes really serious and the need for sacrifice is obvious.

In short, both human nature and our government's structure makes us excel at being retroactive, but horrible at being proactive. The fact that everything has worked out so far isn't because our politicians and our system is flexible to handle whatever issue is thrown at them--they're not--but because this is the first time in U.S. history that we have issues to deal with that the current system is ill-equipped to handle.

The Founders considered a lot, but I think one area they missed is long-term crisis management. We have provisions for immediate crises, like presidential powers for military actions, and succession of power in case of assassination. But how could the men who lived in the land of spacious skies and amber waves of grain predict the scarcity of a resource for a vehicle that wasn't invented for another 100 years? Or a troubled social security system for the elderly at a time when the life expectancy was 35 years?

I don't have a solution. I doubt it's even possible to create a political system that encourages long-term thinking without making sacrifices in other areas (like the balance of power between branches of government). But, then, what is to be done?