Politics is a contest about leadership and general values. Is government good or bad? Policy debate engages a much smaller group of experts and interest groups, and is usually incremental.
Almost no one talks about system failure. That’s too hard to fix, at least within the confines of the Washington establishment. But history shows that meaningful change is usually the result of system failure and dramatic overhaul. “Punctuated equilibrium” is the name political scientists give these tectonic shifts.