This is GPS, the Global Public Square. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Farid Zakaria.

Today on the show, America's attention was fixed this week on Joe Biden's choice of a running mate.

But beyond that, America and the world are still grappling with a pandemic.

And a fresh assortment of prices from Belarus to Beirut.

I'll talk about it all with top former State Department officials, Richard Haas and Anne-Marie Slaughter.

Also, as the U.S. continues to struggle with how to open schools, lessons from the first European country to do so successfully.

Denmark Flung School House doors open way back on April 15th.

What have they learned? I'll talk to the nation's education minister.

Finally, the quest to find a vaccine for COVID-19.

Russian President Putin compared it to the Cold War space race, and he says he's won.

But many don't quite believe that Russia has really repeated its foot-mix success story.

Who is poised across the finish line first and safely? We'll tell you.

But first, here's my take. Rarely has the metaphor been more apt.

Washington is fiddling while America burns. Congress and the Trump administration are barely negotiating anymore,

while unemployment remains at levels rarely seen since the Great Depression.

Do not be fooled by the stock market's vitality, which reflects the strength of a handful of stocks that now dominate the indices.

The conditions for tens of millions of Americans are bleak, with few jobs, low incomes, and a soaring number of business failures.

And despite these emergency conditions, worse than during the crisis of 2008, Washington simply cannot get its act together.

Political polarization has a lot to do with the breakdown. Democrats and Republicans both gain more from their supporters by standing up to the opposing party rather than compromising with it.

That makes it very difficult to pass large complicated bills, and Democrats clearly believing that they have the upper hand,

are demanding that Republicans make larger compromises.

But at the heart of the problem is a substantive disagreement.

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