Nowhere in the real story of Watergate did anyone really say, “follow the money.” And yet that phrase has resonated for decades in the the American psyche.Perhaps the reason is, that the concept itself is in the very DNA of America. It really is, as the campaign slogan said, the economy stupid.
Today, when the very fabric of our republic is being stretched as never before, it allows us to examine what it is that really makes us unique among nations. We’re not the only democracy, we're not the only bastion of liberty and human rights, and the idea of American exceptionalism is discredited daily. So what matters, why do people still want to come here, as they have for centuries?
Bhu Srinivasan argues in his book Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism
,that there is something. A special sauce, mixing the right balance of capitalism and democracy. It makes us wonder to what degree our founders understood this…It’s also clear that in that original battle between agrarianism and mercantilism, it’s pretty clear who won.
