Pollsters and pundits seem to think our American malaise is an economic illness that will be cured when the recession ends. I spent my State Department career deeply involved with the Shah’s regime and revolutionary Iran and I smell deja vu. In the past four years, I’ve seen stronger expressions of political discontent here than in the old days in Iran—at least until crowds demanding change began to assemble by the millions. Citizens in large numbers in this country are, like their counterparts in Iran, simply fed up with those who rule them. The complaints are similar. “Traditional values are eroding. The middle class is being squeezed out. Politics are reserved exclusively for a small circle of incumbents. Only money counts. They’re all corrupt. There are no real choices. Politics is hopeless, so why bother with the charade of participation?” In Iran voting was meaningless; in the United States close to a majority seems to agree.

The good news, I suppose, is that there doesn’t seem to be any Ayatollah figure in view—Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson having faded. The bad news is that we in the Foreign Service and our friends in the Iranian establishment didn’t see Khomeini coming either until he was about to jerk the Persian carpet from under the Shah. In our country, however, extreme discontent may not end in revolutionary change. It may only produce a prolonged period of revulsion against politics among increasingly unhappy constituents and rigidity in the decisions of their timid power-preserving masters, who are fearful of risks that could jeopardize their jobs.

This stalling of the political system occurs as the United States faces the tough challenges of a quickly changing world. Rigidity in policy may be the end of us. We suffer now from a delayed, ineffective reaction to the economic rise of Japan and the Asian “tigers.” How much official thought is now being given to the new challenge of an economically unified Europe?

The Soviet Union has disappeared while we remain rigidly certain that NATO and the huge defense budgets that served us for decades continue to be required. We grope for policies in ethnically fragmenting Eastern Europe and have largely given up in despair the task of promoting development and stability in the Third World. The Middle East, hardly the same region it was forty, twenty, or even five years ago, made what could be a new beginning with the Madrid Conference. But is there any indication that Congress will respond with anything but the same tired, and—for the members—politically profitable formula? We have no useful formulas for dealing with the global challenges of AIDS, debt, and the environment.

To deal with the causes of our crisis of revulsion and rigidity, activists propose to limit campaign financing, enliven debate, impose term limits. Citizens propose, politicians dispose. Only if the noise level gets much, much higher will there be a reaction from Washington. That’s reason enough for everybody to offer proposals of whatever merit. Accordingly, I suggest three ideas that didn’t work during the Iranian revolution, but contributed wonderfully to the noise level—out of which came real political change.

First is a proposal that some of the Shah’s supporters pushed in the early stages of the revolution: buy off the opposition. Pay the mullahs for peace. Everyone will go home, moderate and contented. The idea came late and too modestly, for it left the system intact. Here we see the beginnings of this tactic. Give everyone health care. Cut middle-class taxes. But, with our Treasury busted and foreign bankers holding the purse strings, can we find sufficient cash to buy real political peace? An economic response isn’t adequate for a political question; it can only sink the economy.

The second and cheaper idea was Gary Sick’s, presented at a time when the Shah was on the ropes. The prescription was: “Enough wimpishness, be a tough father figure. Get on a white horse and on TV. Show that you, not Khomeini, are boss.” Gary’s plan never had a chance because the Shah was too wise to get in front of a crowd on or off a white horse. Will George Bush crank up an action that will allow him again to play the glorious leader? Watch out Qaddafi. Or will we have to make do with the phony stuff of TV image-makers, i.e., Willie Horton? Bravado can win applause and votes. It will not cure a system afflicted by leaders who lack the courage to make hard choices.

The third idea is a natural for any politician, whether monarchical or democratic: promises and half-measures. “Let’s try a new Prime Minister,” and “Free (well, mostly free) elections coming in a year or so,” were the Shah’s offers. Too late, too little. Now we hear talk of campaign financing reform (well, sort of) and mild versions of term-limit legislation. Does anyone think compromised approaches will bring in the new faces that will bring back the voters who have dropped out of politics? Of course not. The object of ideas with appeal in Washington is to preserve old faces.

The choices before the American public, like those that Iran faced, are three: drift with the system and suffer the slowly accumulating consequences of rigid policies and uninspired rulers; wait for the Ayatollah—maybe next time without the nasty credentials of David Duke—and the destructive energy he will unleash on the system; or create a clamor against incumbents at all levels, irrespective of virtue and talent, until the more responsible veterans among them realize that the survival of our political system requires their disappearance from political life.