Last night I went to an interesting dinner sponsored by the Aspen Institute, an important Washington think tank headed by Walter Isaacson, of whom you may know. The subject was America and innovation -- IT, new technology in other fields, so on.

I was actually there in my other capacity. I edit a quarterly journal called Democracy:A Journal of Ideas, which is an ideas and policy journal founded by two friends of mine back in 2006. The current issue is devoted to the subject of innovation -- specifically, to the question of what the federal government can do to spur more private-sector innovation -- and contains some very useful stuff, if this is at all your bag (registration required but fast and free).

Anyway it was a really interesting dinner with about 20 really smart people (and me!) sitting around a table. A couple of congressmen, both of whom I spoke with -- intelligent and serious men. Several representatives of the administration. Some think-tankers who toil in the field, and various private sector folk.

Not to get too bogged down in the particulars, but the basic deal is that the US, having led the world in such innovation for decades, is now falling behind. Japan, some Scandinavian countries, the much-ballyhooed Estonia, and yes even old England (in some ways) are doing a lot more than the US is doing, on a federal level, to help new businesses innovate.

In addition, there's all manner of technology, some of which was in fact partially developed in the US, that is being deployed in other countries but not here. There are forms of healthcare IT, for example, that could cyber-link a patient to his or her physicians and care givers on a more-or-less constant basis, resulting in far more preventive than reactive treatment. It would actually help patients, and over time save billions of dollars. In use elsewhere. Not here.

I just kept thinking to myself, as folks went around the table saying "Denmark is doing this" and "Japan has that" and "what's wrong with us?" that there's really only one answer to that question. Or two.

Answer one: One of our two political parties won't let this investment happen because it's the government, and because Obama is for it. Answer two: One of our two legislative bodies in all likelihood wouldn't pass such funding on a large-enough scale for reasons related to answer one.

That's it, in a nutshell. Our problem in the US isn't lack of creative thinking (although more must be done to encourage study of math and science and engineering). It isn't lack of solutions. The problem in other words, isn't substantive at all. They don't know things in Finland about healthcare IT that we don't know here.

Our problem is politics, pure and simple. Confabs like the one I attended last night don't usually go here, because these events are understood to be nonpartisan.

But people really do need to understand this and grapple with it.

And this is the kind of thing that actually causes me more despair than Obama's poll numbers. One of our two political parties is now constructed in such a way that anything that smacks of science, a government role therein, and (God forbid!) innovation in biotechnology fields, is fundamentally dead on arrival on Capitol Hill.

The Democrats can get around this roadblock by imploring CEOs, who'd support such federal activity as a rule, to come down hard on the GOP. That's possible, but it too is a tough political slog. So for the time being, the ooga-booga party, the party of superstition, the party of if-he's-for-it-we're-against-it, can do serious harm to their own country's ability to compete.

