"Our system of checks and balances, with resulting fragmentation of power, frustrates leadership, saps efficiency, and erodes responsibility... The governing party is failing to govern and the opposition party is failing to oppose."

The significance of something differs upon one's own perspective. I interpret this quote to mean that "checks and balances," lead to our government's habitual failure. Additionally, "The opposition party is failing to oppose" holds great irony in the sense that a specific person solely dedicated to doing a specific task isn't doing that designated task. Such as, a mailman not delivering mail.

Taken at face value it would mean that you have a system of government that has traditionally been divided into various branches, each of which functions as a check against the other. The idea being that no one branch has too much power.

The author then puts forward the possibility that this division of power has becomes a negative in today's world. In the author's mind the division of power is starting to have negative consequences in terms of the ability construct legislation.

The problem of legislation goes back to checks and balances. Legislation is subject to revision, compromise and further interpretation. In other words, legislation; when it finally comes to fruition exhibits little resemblance to the original proposal.

Beauty of democracy, people fail to do what they suppose to do but still democracy goes on. It might also mean that there is an understanding between opposition and governing party.

beauty of democracy, people fail to do what they suppose to do but still democracy goes on. it might also mean that there is an understanding between opposition and governing party.

That would be called a compromise on legislation.

Here is the whole quote and not a c/p version:

Can Soviet and other Eastern European leaders, both newly institutional and on the cobblestones, learn anything from us as they reform their political systems? Yes, two great lessons, both from our founding period.

First, every new democracy needs a bill of rights - a guarantee of civil, political, social and economic freedoms. The Europeans may have to insist on it. In 1787, when the Founding Fathers left a bill of rights out of their Constitution, our own cobblestone leaders demanded and got it.Second, there must be an opposition party - and a strong one. The Communist parties in Eastern Europe, as we see, are learning this lesson. In America, people at the grass roots acted under the leadership of Jefferson and Madison to establish the opposition Republican Party in the 1790's. The crucial moment came in 1800 when the Federalists, having lost to the Republicans, were willing to turn over the presidency to men they feared and despised.

These lessons apply especially to the Soviet Union, now that its Central Committee has voted to surrender the Communist Party's monopoly on power and to permit other parties to compete for the first time since the Bolsheviks consolidated their power.

Do we have anything else to offer Eastern Europe as a political model? Very little. Oddly, we face the need to make the same kinds of changes - constitutional, party, electoral - that Eastern European leaders do.

Constitutional: Our system of checks and balances, with the resulting fragmentation of power, frustrates leadership, saps efficiency and erodes responsibility. No wonder virtually all nations making a choice of constitutions since World War II have selected the parliamentary system over our 18th-century-style separation of presidential, Congressional and judicial power.

Party: Both the Democratic and Republican parties have steadily wasted away at the grass roots. As organizations they have lost the key functions of recruiting leadership, standing behind it in office and taking responsibility for its performance.

The parties have largely given up their historic job of bringing out the vote, as indicated by the steady drop in turnouts in recent decades. In effect, the governing party is failing to govern and the opposition party is failing to oppose.

Today, the Democrats can't even get together in opposition to a Bush Administration tax reduction proposal that Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and other Democratic Party heroes would have denounced as a "soak-the-poor" bill.

Electoral: Memories of the 1988 election are so vivid that few need be reminded of the problems - domination by the media and money, the "long ballot" that bewilders voters, the avoidance of real issues and the endless demagoguery, sensationalism and trivialization.

One archaic feature of the constitutional system, the Electoral College, should be put into the Smithsonian Institution before it distorts the presidential vote once too often.

Will we stick with our non-egalitarian, horse-and-buggy political system while Eastern Europeans democratize and modernize theirs? Probably. Most of our officeholders are not likely to alter arrangements that help sustain them in power.

The main hope would lie in the American equivalent of cobblestone leadership. Locked away - in union locals, peace groups, church congregations, local party committees, student societies, community action and neighborhood improvement associations, environmental action groups - is a vast potential for political leadership and change.
'The Deadlock of Democracy: Four Party Politics in America '
By James MacGregor Burns

It's written by historian James MacGregor Burns who introduced the transformation leadership theory. Specific to the quote ;Burns is critical of the Madison model of checks and balances and a federalist system;preferring the Jeffersonian model of pure majority rule.

What it means is the system is designed to maintain the status quo and place checks on progress and development. It prevents radical change