Having witnessed a rancorous government shutdown and near breach of the federal debt ceiling, plenty of Americans are pessimistic about where we’ll go from here as a country.

The U.S. and Russia have reached a deal over dismantling Syria’s store of chemical weapons. Getting there required going down some new roads politically. And philosophically.

We all want voting to be more efficient and less time consuming. But these upgrades won’t change what our electoral system produces—a government paralyzed by partisan gridlock.

I was on a plane two weeks ago headed to California to visit my daughter when I first heard Bill O’Reilly’s televised rant justifying the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman.