James Fallows rightly calls Eric Cantor “the least valuable player” on his team. Visibility usually coincides with worthlessness, at least in our current political games. James Fallows, usually a mellow fellow, has this to say about those games and one team in particular.

I’ve complained in the past about Sen. Richard Shelby’s willful veto of Peter Diamond’s nomination as a Fed governor, and about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s intentional stall of nominees across the board, as a passive-aggressive way to hamstring the Administration.

Both of them now give way to Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader (official Congressional photo, via Wikipedia, right), who in walking out of the talks to avoid a default on U.S. debt gives as clear an example of petty-ambition-over-national-interest as we’ve seen in public life in quite a while.

… Ezra Klein makes the motivations clear. Cantor was happy to stay in the negotiations through the budget-cutting stage. But as soon as the unavoidable other part of the negotiations began — finding ways to raise revenue — he chickened out and left the hard work (for a Republican) to House Speaker John Boehner. …Atlantic

Fallows and Klein nail it. Both see real — no, really big — trouble ahead as a result of Cantor’s “petulance”.

Or cowardice, as I see it.

Good for John Boehner in recognizing that more than his own ambitions are at stake here. If the default actually comes, and markets panic, and interest rates for everything shoot up, keep the courageous Rep. Cantor in mind on that day.

Know what else I believe? The tea partyers and their Congressional sycophants, in their fog of pre-pubescent innocence, actually want a disaster. But a market panic, kiddos, is no rapture.

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Fallows’ “passive aggressive” is too fancy a term for current day Republicans, though not inaccurate. Smarmy cowardice is what I find so unattractive about them. People who are genuinely strong don’t play mean and spiteful.

The Financial Times has a reminder:

Global financial markets had so far been reassured by statements from both the White House and Republicans that they wanted a deal before the debt ceiling of $14,300bn is reached on August 2, but that could change if the talks stall.

But in an editorial, the FT holds little respect for the Republican position.

Only a handful of Republicans think that default, done carefully, might be salutary. The deal taking shape includes a “downpayment” of spending cuts and caps on future deficits. The fight is over the content of the downpayment and the design of the caps.

The debate is therefore dangerously skewed. Further short-term stimulus should be on the table, married to firm commitments to cut borrowing in later years. With the economy close to stalling, it is risky to cut spending immediately.

Stated politely, with emphasis added, that’s pretty much what top economists have been saying all along.

Cross posted from the blog Prairie Weather.