A To-Do List

Whatever happens in the election, America must overhaul its government. Here’s how President Bill Lincoln—the fusion of two giants of the 19th century—would approach reform

- By John Micklethwait and Adian Wooldridge

For a country that is losing a war, the U.S. is having a strange election. One hundred and eighty thousand Americans have died from Covid-19—more than double the number who perished in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined. America has done significantly worse than most other rich countries, with a mortality rate of 500 deaths per million people compared with just over 100 in Germany, and fewer than 10 deaths per million in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Of course, different countries count Covid-19 casualties in different ways, but the gap is immense. If the virus is a test of government effectiveness, then the world’s most powerful country has failed spectacularly.

Indeed, the coronavirus crisis could well turn out to be a historical turning point. Five hundred years ago, China was the greatest power on the planet, with the world’s biggest capital city and best-run government. The West then rose by mastering statecraft—first in Europe’s competing nation-states, and then in the U.S. As the 1960s opened, America was aiming to put a man on the moon, while millions of Chinese were dying of starvation. Ever since that decade, Western governments have ossified while Asian governments have caught up, and in many cases overtaken the West. The average citizen is not only safer from Covid-19 in Singapore, South Korea, or Taiwan than in the U.S.—they also enjoy better health and send their children to better schools.

So Covid-19 is a wake-up call for the West. The encouraging news is that the U.S. has reinvented itself before. A reformed America could lead the West again; but if Washington snoozes, it could follow the way of other empires that crumbled, notably Rome and Athens (which gave way to autocratic Sparta in the wake of a plague).