Jerry Pournelle says it used to be more important who your mayor was than who the President of the U.S. was.

We have spent the past seventy years on a constant march toward focusing more and more power into Washington, DC. We are already at the point where there is almost no conceivable activity which does not in some way fall under the control of the Federal government. Certainly not economic activity. State governments have gotten to the point where they are almost appendages to the Federal government. Federal aid is now the largest source of revenue for the states.

We may not be able to decentralize a power structure that already has a solid grip on us, but at least we could stop making it worse.