Truly compelling article in the London Times this morning. The headline is “Bush on the skids? It’s all a load of baloney”, but the key sentence is down around the middle, in a discussion of how American government works:
The effective secret of America’s success is that Washington is habitually immobilised.
A beautiful paraphrase of Jefferson’s “That government is best which governs least”. (Which I may be paraphrasing somewhat myself, I don’t have the quote in front of me…)