Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, set out some time ago on an unlikely project: to diagnose America’s ailments beyond the usual-suspect answers.
Politicians are paid to enact policies. So typically when they describe what’s wrong, they speak of policies that got us into our messes and policies to get us out.
Murphy’s inquiry took him somewhere else — beyond the familiar territory of prescription-drug prices and block-grant funding, into the substrate of our inner life.
What he found in his interactions with constituents and conversations with scholars and reading was a spiritual rot, a death of relationship, a connection recession.
To be clear, in his analysis and that of others, the causes of much of this affliction are very much political, very much in the realm of policy. But what Murphy’s thinking and now writing make clear is that what happens in politics and policy doesn’t stay there. It ultimately trickles down into our relationships, our marriages, our stress hormones, our childhoods, our neighborhood vibes, our hangouts, our conversations with the barista, our block parties, our friendships.
This week Senator Murphy pushed “Crisis of the Common Good,” a book-length investigation of how capitalism and other forces in American life have cut into our civic dance with each other and wormed their way into every last fiber of our culture.
It is a project I’m fascinated by, because it involves someone in a position of political power widening the scope of inquiry to ask how the things he works on affect other things not typically regarded as political.
So I was thrilled to have this conversation with the senator today. We talked about:
— Why he thinks America’s real problem is much deeper than Trump
— How private equity is coming between married couples
— Whether Republicans or Democrats will be first to pull off a potential political realignment that is there for the taking
— Whether Bernie Sanders was right all along (and where he fell short)
— Why the Democratic Party refuses to introspect
— And whether he will run for president (cameo: the other presidential contenders who have been texting him this week)
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