Last week, at a meeting in New York, it was announced that a group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers have agreed to get together once in a while and chat. This made news nationwide.

Does that not tell you all you need to know about the sorry state of American politics? Does that not paint the starkest possible picture of the frozen government and balkanized parties that have left our nation lurching from crisis to crisis like a drunk on a heaving deck? Lord help us, it is newsworthy when Republicans and Democrats agree to talk.

This announcement of the political equivalent of a foreign exchange program was made under the aegis of a fledgling public interest group, No Labels, which has set as its task nothing less than the fixing of America’s broken government.