The problem is not that American companies and workers are uncompetitive. It is not that manufacturing jobs are flowing overseas. Those economic trends have largely played themselves out. It is a new dynamic: political deadlock handicapping our economy.

Michelle Meyer, senior U. S. economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said this week that "fiscal cliff" gamesmanship is a drag on the economy. Even if the cliff is averted in the next few days or weeks, Meyer estimated that the U.S. economy will grow by just 1 percent in the first quarter of 2013, a third of the 3.1 percent posted in the third quarter of 2012.

"What's been missing in this recovery has been confidence," Meyer told the New York Times. "We'd see a healthy recovery if it weren't for this uncertainty and the potential shock from Washington."

A second example is compromising on rising gun violence. In the wake of the murder of two firefighters in Rochester, New York and 20 first-graders in Newtown, Connecticut, the debate over gun violence devolved into a familiar pattern. Liberal commentators blamed the National Rifle Association. The NRA blamed the news media.

In truth, seizing the 300 million guns that now circulate among America's 315 million people is unrealistic. So is placing armed guards in each of the country's roughly 100,000 public schools. Instead, polls show that most Americans support a mix of reforms.

A majority of Americans continue to oppose a ban on assault rifles, a divisive issue that has long been supported by liberals but vehemently opposed by conservatives, according to polls. At the same time, the vast majority of Americans support stricter control of handguns, more effective background checks at gun shows, and a ban on large-capacity ammunition clips that hold dozens of rounds. In the wake of Newtown, improving our identification and treatment of the mentally ill is also vital.

Any attempt at enacting these reforms, though, is likely to stall in the House of Representatives, the same place that rejected Speaker John Boehner's attempt at fiscal cliff compromises last week. Yesterday, Nate Silver of the New York Times joined a long list of analysts and academics who have found that both parties, though primarily Republican-dominated state legislatures, have used the redistricting of House seats to create a warped system that rewards political extremism, not compromise.

Over the last 20 years, the number of House districts that swing between political parties has shrunk by two-thirds from 103 in 1992 to roughly 35 today, Silver found. At the same time, the number of districts where parties win by landslides has nearly doubled from 123 to 242.

Today, 55 percent of House members come from districts where their biggest threat is losing a primary election, not the general election. Of the landslide districts, 124 are held by Republicans and 117 Democrats (one is an independent). They have little incentive to compromise. Instead, their incentive is to play to their party base. Making independent boards responsible for redistricting, as some states have done, would be far better.