BOB FRANKEN

Finally, I’ve figured out what “American exceptionalism” is all about. We are exceptionally dysfunctional — at least our federal government is. A recent Gallup Poll revealed that when asked what America’s biggest problem is, the answer was the government. And no wonder. Imagine you’re the leader of a country trying to deal with the United States right now. Any country, like, say Iran, or the Europeans, or Russia, or Israel.

Then, right at the most slippery point in negotiations with an elected U.S. president and his secretary of state haggling over a nuclear Iran, imagine what you’d think if t...