It didn’t have to be this way. No, it didn’t; but there are no more lions among the sheep. Reason and comity have taken leave of the body politik over the last 30 or so years, to the point where the elected leaders are now the followers. They are unwilling to speak truth, and at the same time will congratulate themselves on their ability to solve a crisis, the magnitude of which hasn’t been seen since The Great Depression of the 1930’s.

No. The lions have left. The Ted and Bob Kennedys are gone. The Mark Hatfields, the Everett Dirksons, the Jacob Javitses, the Sam Rayburns, the Mondales, the Weickers, the Johnsons (“I never trust a man unless I've got his pecker in my pocket.”)…all are gone. The voices of moderation, of principled speech, of collaboration among political opponents have given way to falsehoods, disinformation, sound bites, false outrage, personal accusations, and above all, an unwillingness to stake one’s reelection on stating the truth and standing up to the mob.

There is nothing to be proud of in what happened. The Congress of the United States of America, in passing HR 2480, and the nation’s chief executive have fashioned nothing which solves a problem other than to take a routine act – raising the debt limit to pay the country’s bills – and allowing a minority to hold it hostage in order to have its way. It was, in fact, the ultimate ear mark. In a remarkable series of events, insanity was the winner. No one is happy with the result and nearly every elected leader now runs for cover. The major issue of our time, nearly two of every ten able-bodied Americans being out of work and having no prospect of finding it, was shoved aside in favor of vitriol and claims of being an aggrieved party.

In an absolutely fantastic and cynical maneuver, both political parties in Congress abdicated their responsibility and created a “super Congress” of 12 members who will decide who gets money and who doesn’t. Its creation will give the sheep cover. For if one thing is certain, the super Congress will be unable to fashion how to trim government spending by $1.3 trillion and agree on how to do it, automatically gutting programs on which millions depend. Congressional constituencies will be told “I had nothing to do with it!” when their voters scream about the loss of their Medicare benefits, or a clipping of their Social Security checks. They will hear the yelping of those who want to cut government spending – but just not the spending on which they depend. And they will say, “Don’t look at me! I didn’t vote for it.” And they will be right. They left the hard choices to others. Above all, the fabulous gains of those who profited mightily by a 30 year binge of deregulated banking and financial excess will stand virtually untouched, their wealth intact, while those who suffer or those with marginal resources will pick up the tab.

Sitting on the sidelines is a chief executive who is unable or unwilling to scold, cojole, and threaten a bullying congressional minority of Know-Nothings and martial the political will of Americans who at their best are the most generous people on earth. It is said he is a realist, yet realism in this instance was absent from anything coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. One principled stand after another was abandoned in order to get a bill out. One strategy after the other was given up in favor of mediocre paeans to “compromise.” There will be no invoking of  the 14^th Amendment. There will be no signing statement (something the Bush Administration used with cynical abandon). Only a signing on to a “deal” which solved a routine problem and yet perpetuated the problems of a nation overspent and unwilling to pay the bills.

Today, ideological purity is the coin of the Republican political realm. It is the lingua franca with which to both win an election and retain one’s congressional job. For the mob, ever spurred on by multi-millionaire radio, internet and television pundits, will have it no other way. For the sake of power, the Republican Party made a Faustian bargain with the likes of Grover Norquist and his money. Democrats, for their part, are equally afraid of upsetting anyone and seek to hide behind programs kept in place long past their usefulness. And so our leaders are afraid; afraid to tell the mobs “I’ll will go this far and no further” because they, like most of us in our own small way, are afraid to risk their political lives. It was a governmental failure of epic consequences. This is what happened when small people were asked to do big jobs.

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