If you believe history is yet to come, the United States is still the place to be. Only in America can you find people trying to make cars fly, abolish human mortality and nurture robots with feelings. Yet America’s politics is remarkable for its resistance to new ideas. The gap between Washington’s dearth of creativity and the ferment beyond is widening. Every week, some audacious start-up aims to exploit the commercial potential of science. Many are too zany to succeed. A few will deserve to. Every week, it seems, a presidential campaign is launched. Some of the 2016 candidates are actively hostile to science. None, so far, have hinted at original ideas for fixing America’s problems. One will undeservedly succeed.
The root of America’s intellectual disconnect is cultural. In Silicon Valley, “fail harder” is a motto. A history of bankruptcy is proof of business credentials. In Washington, a single miscue can ruin your career. Ruth Porat’s move last week fromMorgan Stanley, where she was chief financial officer, to Google for a cool $70m was taken as another sign of Silicon Valley’s increasing edge over Wall Street. A growing share of top US graduates are bypassing a career in investment banking for Big Data. Less noticed was the fact that Ms Porat turned down a job in Barack Obama’s administration last year as deputy Treasury secretary. She feared the Senate confirmation process would rip her to shreds. She was probably right.
The result is a system in which the bland are leading the bland. Washington is host to the largest collection of think- tanks in the world. Yet they are notable nowadays for their lack of original thinking. The ideas shortage has nothing to do with low IQ. The post codes around Washington have America’s highest concentration of PhDs other than Silicon Valley. But if you want a job in a future US administration, you risk running a gauntlet from which you may never recover. The route to success is paved with caution. One stray remark, or risqué policy idea, can kill your prospects. Science is the basis of America’s innovative edge. Yet embracing it can be a political career-stopper. Several Republican presidential candidates reject the notion of man-made global warming while some believe child vaccines cause disease.