Politics, according to Bismark, is the art of the possible. If only we were so civilized. John Kenneth Galbraith revised the maxim: “Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.” That is where the debt-limit debate stands, between the disaster of default and budget proposals from each side which the other can’t swallow. There is no reason why this should be so; the limit should have been raised without fuss, without posturing, without playing chicken and without vast programs of debt reduction.
Even supposing that this is the proper time to debate the budget, President Obama has moved so far to the right that, if his offer had been accepted, the result would seem, to anyone asleep for the past two and one-half years, as if a Republican president were in office. Conservative commentators cannot believe that the Republican negotiators did not agree to the administration’s proposal and declare victory.
However, a budget victory, even the adoption of a conservative program, is not enough now. The demands of the House Republicans are so extreme that they no longer fall within the realm of rational politics, to say nothing of rational economics. Their demands are driven by a desire to dismantle the federal government. They may imagine themselves in Boston in 1773, throwing tea into the harbor, protesting unfair taxation. However, their true place is 1788, where they join the anti-federalists in arguing against the Constitution and against the creation not only of a national government but of a nation.
