Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- When I was in graduate school, I drove an AMC Hornet. I loved the oddball vehicle, but the car had a nasty habit of overheating.

I took it to the closest garage several times. They tried installing a new thermostat and flushing out the radiator. Neither step worked. Exasperated, I took the car to a different garage. They couldn't fix it either. The only way I could get from point A to point B on a hot day without having the car die was to drive with the heat on.

Ben Bernanke reminded us last week that our government is a lot like my old Hornet. Republicans were unable to get government to work effectively, so voters have given Democrats a chance. Yet Democrats aren't having any better luck.

Bernanke's implicit message about the government's failure to deal with the surging costs of retirement and health benefits was a sobering one. While Democrats are fiddling with minor fixes like the minimum wage and student loans, Rome burns.

``If early and meaningful action is not taken, the U.S. economy could be seriously weakened,'' Bernanke told the Senate Budget Committee. He added later, ``The right time to start was about 10 years ago.''

Ten years ago, President Bill Clinton agreed with this assessment. A crack team of his top people in the Treasury Department was assigned the task of finding a solution to the coming train wreck in Social Security funding.

Enter Lewinsky

Their work never saw the light of day as the Lewinsky affair dominated the final acts of the Clinton administration. Republicans at the time chose to pursue short-term political victory at the expense of an opportunity to adopt policy reforms that could be of lasting value to our nation.

Looking back, one can't help but feel regret for the lost opportunity. Our nation would clearly be in better shape today if economic reform had been chosen over impeachment.

Like Clinton before him, President George W. Bush also recognized the pressing need to rein in spending on so-called entitlement programs. His administration devoted an enormous amount of time and energy to a Social Security overhaul in 2005, embarking on a national tour immediately after the State of the Union address, stopping at more than 160 events in 100 cities in 60 days.

But Democrats resisted his entreaties to cooperate. Like the Republicans of the late 1990s, their calculus led them to give short-term political advantage a higher value than the long-term economic good.

Begging for Cooperation

Now, Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are practically begging the Democrats to work with them. With control of Congress, Democrats are in a position to dictate most of the parameters of the legislation. But they are reluctant to play, once again for short-term political reasons.

Republicans are politically on the ropes because of Bush's Iraq policy, and Democrats don't want to bail them out by handing the president any legislative victories. Moreover, any reform will carry political uncertainties. Tax increases and benefit cuts are necessary. Why gamble your winning streak on such risky political moves?

Instead of an earnest attempt to address our nation's urgent problems, we get a series of laughably inconsequential policies, even though the president is begging Democrats to turn their attention to the big things. It is as if Democrats have moved into a new house with a hole in the roof and a crumbling foundation, and have decided to change the wallpaper.

Risky Strategy

This is an extremely risky strategy. Americans know what our nation's biggest problems are. They hunger, as Barack Obama has reminded us, for a government that places the good of the nation above the good of the party. But like the Republicans before them, Democrats appear to be giving us the opposite.

Fixing our biggest problems is hardly rocket science. Any randomly selected school board has the talent it takes to get it done right. Reforms can be imagined. The politicians willing to do the right thing simply can't be found.

Ironically, this creates a political opening. Imagine that some Republican visionary steps forward and reminds Americans that Democrats refused to address our nation's biggest problems, choosing instead to use their power to enact populist junk food.

Such a leader could provide a list of our biggest problems, suggest bipartisan reform, and then provide Americans a simple promise: If elected, government's priorities will be their priorities. Imagine if that compact contained a credible promise to filibuster any bills not on the list of priorities until they are addressed. It might just work.

Our government isn't broken because our founding fathers erred in their design. Our government isn't working because legislation has become the scoreboard in a grudge match between political parties that have a rivalry more bitter than the Yankees and the Red Sox.

Americans are going to wake up to that realization sooner rather than later. By succumbing to the temptation to play the game as it has been played before, Democrats do nothing to sate our hunger for change. That doesn't bode well for the new majority party.

(Kevin Hassett is director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He was chief economic adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona during the 2000 primaries. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Kevin Hassett at khassett@aei.org.

Last Updated: January 22, 2007 00:09 EST