Congress could not get out of DC fast enough after passing the debt deal, although it is hard to imagine why.  I am not sure that anyone would want to go home and answer the questions of constituents.

It is also hard to declare a winner here; first, who knows what either party really stands for; second, even if you could identify the teams from their uniforms, it is not clear if anyone prevailed.  Politicians call such a result a “compromise.”  Real people have a compound noun for that result, the first half of which depicts a bovine male.

How do you parse the alleged business slant of Republicans with the negative business effect of cutting expenses and hence jobs?  How do you parse the alleged liberal slant of Democrats with offering up for cutting the social programs (the requirement to share cuts between domestic and military budgets runs out after two years)?

The answer may be the removal of traditional political perspectives from the process we call politics.  Debate used to be about the social compact; how should government function in discharging its duties and inspiring the wealth and happiness of the population?  Now it is governed, overtly and implicitly, by social agendas.  How do we feel about poor people?  Foreigners?  Abortion?  Religion?  Is this a “good” development?  It certainly curtails civility and fosters the kind of intransigence we witnessed in Washington.

Democratic U.S. Representative Mike Capuano (Massachusetts) is what I call an old-fashioned liberal (it is amazing how that word – liberal —   has become pejorative; and I do not know why), and his tortured explanation of why he voted against “the deal” is full of factoids that are really make-weights on a troubled path being trod by a troubled soul.  But one such irrelevancy also was startling: only two countries, the US and Denmark, even have debt ceilings.  The stopping place of our debt ceiling is not designed with economic or social theory in mind, it just happens to be the number de jour.  Why do we have it at all?

Meanwhile, we look forward to this Fall’s mandated $1.5 trillion of additional cuts, per the wisdom of the joint Congressional committee.  I am preparing for this by getting new tires for my car and selling my convertible; there are going to be an awful lot of potholes and falling bridges on our highways in the near future.

Unless the unemployed volunteer to fix them for free.