Perhaps the most miserable recent example is Paul Wellstone, elevated to the United States Senate in 1990 on the efforts of Minnesota's progressive and peace community. The Gulf War soon put our hero to the test, on which the former professor scored a big fat F by hibernating the moment Bush commenced the bombing of Iraq. Once again, the institution changed the man rather than the man changing the institution. The reason the political institutions don't change the way they operate, regardless of who gets elected to direct their operation, is that the prevailing economic system dictates what the government can and cannot do. Hourly wages have dropped like a rock.
Family income is down.
Unemployment and underemployment are up. More people are living in poverty. There are more homeless . At the same time, the nation has more industrial productive capability than ever before. Technology keeps increasing the productivity of labor to ever-higher levels, producing huge surpluses of goods and services.