0 and don't miss an interview with the bravest girl in the world. that's tonight. fareed zakaria starts right now. >> this is "gps." welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. we'll start today's show asking a simple question. why has washington become so dysfunctional? what are the roots of the discord? i put together a terrific panel of experts who have studied american politics closely. then lloyd blankfein, the chairman and ceo of goldman sachs on the great signs of strength the united states economy was showing before washington went to war with itself. and on who's at fault and why president obama missed two important summits, someone else is taking advantage and iran versus israel. is there a war in their genes? in trying to explain how washington got into the mess it is in, pundits and politicians have focused on ideology. they point out the country has become more polarized as have the political parties in particular the republican party. the diagnosis is accurate but there's another distinctive cause of the current crisis which might have even more long lasting effects. the collapse of authority especially within the republican party, which might mean that these new tactics of threats, crises and deadlock are the new normal. the face of the republicans look like it did in '95 and '96 when the party stood its ground and shut down the government. that movement was led by the speaker of the house, newt gingrich, who directed it from start to finish. john boehner by contrast acknowledged that his understanding of leadership is to sort of manage whatever his people want to do as cbs's bob schieffer put it. gingrich had the power to speak for his side. boehner, by contrast, is worried that were he to make a deal, he would lose his job and he's right to be worried. tea party members routinely explain that they lie awake worrying that boehner will compromise and cut a deal on obama care, the budget or immigration. the tea party is quite unlike gingrich's contract with america movement from the 1990s. grassroots movement made up by people who have a deep, deep dissatisfaction with where the united states has gone over the past several decades, cultur culturally, socially and economically and crucially for this degeneration they blame both parties. in a recent gallop survey, an astounding 43% of tea party activists had an unfavorable view of the republican party with only 55% of them having a favorable view. they see themselves as insurgents within the republican party and not loyal members of it. the breakdown of any party discipline coupled with the rise of an extreme ideology are the twin forces propelling the current crisis. the republican party used to be a party that valued hierarchy. the democrats were a loose coalition of assorted interest with little party discipline and democrats nominated outsiders for presidents. mcgovern, clinton, obama. the republicans nominated the guy who had waited for his turn. today the republicans are dominated by the tea party which has no organized structure, no platform, no hierarchy and no leader. this story began of course in the 1970s as political primariis pro li proliferated. more recent technological and organizational changes have accelerated the shift making it easier for outsiders to fund raise, get access to free media, establish direct connections with voters. at some point the republicans might move to the center. ideological shifts come and go. the decay of hour is moving in one direction and it will continue to transform politics. the american political system is designed with many opportunities for gridlock and paralysis any way and these are only going to multiply. at the end of the day without the capacity for leadership, government becomes difficult and self-government becomes close to impossible. a legendary political scientist said no america without democra democracy, no democracy without politics and no politics without parties and no parties without compromise and moderation. let's hope he was right about that last bit. for more on this, go to cnn.co / fareed. let's get started. you heard my take and lets get to my panel who have studied the subject deeply. norman ornstein is author of "its even worse than it looks. how the american constitutional system collide d with new politics of extremism" and jeffrey toobin is with us and vanessa williamson is a ph.d. candidate at harvard university and co-author of "the tea party and remaking of republican conservati conservatism." a fine piece of work. one thing i want to you explain to us, there are people who say, look, using the debt ceiling or even the shutdown as a threat to get what you want, this is part of what congress has done for the last 20 or 25 years. you actually wrote very teeloq t eloquently saying it really isn't. why? >> we have seen the political system used as a game for a very long time. you can see the scripts when your party has the presidency, members will get up and say we've got to be disciplined. we have to be careful about the full faith and credit of the united states and the other party says we're going to stand firm to make sure that our debt stays under control and then they'll switch the scripts. barack obama played that game when he was a senator. everybody knew it was a game. they were never really going to threaten the full faith and credit of the united states. back when democrats had a majority in the house of representatives and ronald reagan was president, we say the debt limit used as a lever over disputes over spending but again everybody knew that there were votes in reserve just in case. now using the debt limit as a real threat, i will send the country over the cliff unless my demands are met. as a hostage for extortion purposes, that is simply unprecedented. it started in 2011. it's escalated now. it's unacceptable. >> and a lot of times what those negotiations would take the debt limit and tack it on an ongoing budget negotiation. there were times when something was being negotiated. let's do it all together. >> it was folded together with a negotiation over spending which was directly related but one time you saw a deal that didn't directly involve that was when tip o'neil said to ronald reagan, my democrats will vote for your increase in the debt limit if you write them each a personal letter thanking them for doing it so it can't be used against anymore in an attack in the next election. that's different than what we see now. >> at the heart of this, jeff, you think is redistricting. explain why. >> ever since the 1980 census, both parties have decided that they are going to preserve their districts and computer technology, software, has allowed them to craft districts that are overwhelmingly democrat or overwhelmingly republican. that means the incumbents in congress fear primaries from their own party more than they fear the option party which means ideological purity is a greater value, political value, for many congressman than bipartisanship and that especially on the republican side has led to a very substantial caucus who simply are more extreme even than the republican party now which is a lot more conservative than it used to be. >> that means the flip side of that is 60 members of the house of representatives who have really been at the heart of this whole thing. they find that in their districts, which are overwhelmingly republican, overwhelmingly white, they are very popular for having threatened -- for having attacked president obama. >> there is as far as i know no republican member of congress who has paid a political price for being too extreme. there have been plenty of moderates in the senate and in the house who have lost their seats because of this or at least suffered serious challenge. no one has suffered by being too extreme and politicians respond to those sort of incentives. >> vanessa, why is this happening in the senate which is not subject to redistricting and why is it happening in the whole political system, the move to the extreme particularly on the right? >> i'm glad that you raised that. it's definitely the case that while at times of redistricting we see increases in the sort of safety of seats for whoever gets the opportunity to choose their districts, but the pattern has been happening for decades not just on the census but over all the years and important aspect to think about that is sorting of the american people. not that we're counting people in different categories, but the ideological difference between people has grown and they've sorted themselves into neighborhoods that are more economically similar, more socially similar and that results in far less need to compromise. >> norm, you have said that all of this is true and there's a bipartisan aspect to it happening on each side but that the republican party you called them an insurgent outsider and you said it's really the republicans who are to blame more in this politics of extremism. >> and of course we've seen the parties polarize but the fact is democratic party moved a little bit to the left. republican party has moved dramatically to the right. we have lots of evidence for that. it's not just what i say. when you have jeb bush say during the last campaign that ronald reagan couldn't win a nomination in his own party now, it tells you something. but it's not just polarization. it's become tribal. some of this goes back to newt gingrich and the strategy that he used to win a republican majority in the house in 1994. some of it is the new tribal media. but the fact is you have a party now with a dramatic increase in the number of people who are not conservatives. they are radicals. they don't believe in a smaller, leaner, meaner government where the parts that you need to have work efficiently. they want to blow the whole thing up. they don't believe in institutions and the fact is they're now the dominant forces in the party and you don't see the same thing on the left. >> institution of the moderate republican in the united states senate. there were a dozen of them in the 1970s. maybe there's one now, susan collins. on the supreme court moderate republicans dominated for decades. all done. >> we need to take a break. we have heard the problem. what is the solution when we come back. 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