Bill Schneider

Bill Schneider has covered politics for more than four decades – enough time to discover some dirty little secrets. Want to know why it’s so hard for our government to get anything done? Because it was designed not to work. It’s easy to stop things from happening, with our separation of powers and checks and balances. But here’s another dirty little secret: it often does work. It works only when there is a crisis. Is the deficit a real crisis? What about climate change? And what’s going to happen to health care reform?

Is there any hope for ending the gridlock in American government? Four Presidents in a row have promised to bring the country together (Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama). They all failed. What will it take?