As the capitol shows signs of awakening from the debt-ceiling fever dream with face-saving aspirin for both sides, onlookers try to understand the pathology of it all.
Like the final scene of “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” after crazed loyalties and pride have created carnage, a dazed survivor is left to wander through the wreckage, mumbling, “Madness, madness.”
As the Chairman of the Fed describes failure to raise the debt limit as a “catastrophic…calamitous…self-inflicted wound” to the economy, the President in his Weekly Address is virtually pleading for sanity:
“After all, we’ve worked together like that before. Ronald Reagan worked with Tip O’Neill and Democrats to cut spending, raise revenues, and reform Social Security. Bill Clinton worked with Newt Gingrich and Republicans to balance the budget and create surpluses. Nobody ever got everything they wanted. But they worked together. And they moved this country forward.
”That kind of cooperation should be the least you expect from us–not the most you expect from us.”
In a piece titled “Getting to Crazy,” Paul Krugman notes: “If a Republican president had managed to extract the kind of concessions on Medicare and Social Security that Mr. Obama is offering, it would have been considered a conservative triumph. But when those concessions come attached to minor increases in revenue, and more important, when they come from a Democratic president, the proposals become unacceptable plans to tax the life out of the U.S. economy.”
Washington insanity seems to be contagious as Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee finds racism in the madness.
MORE.
UPDATE: Washington’s focus on a posssible solution is accelerating. Note these stories:
—Congressional GOP Leaders Slowly Convincing Newer Members of Importance of Raising Debt Ceiling
—Top lawmakers target ‘grand bargain’ for debt plan
—House Republicans brace for compromise on debt
—James Joyner on Republican Leadership versus Young Guns
–-Booman on the efforts by GOP bigwigs to get a compromise.