I wish I could think of something a bit more uplifting than Robert Reich's urgent assurance: "This is not Armageddon."
That salve, spoken last night on one of the many cable-news programs in mourning, only reminded me of those once-youthful assurances I would hear about some possible blind date: "She's not, really, well, you know, ugly."
Yeah, we get the picture. And probably the best snapshot was that taken by a friend of Paul Krugman's, who said of our current, hard-fought status: "We are a banana republic with nukes."
Whether we achieved that ranking yesterday or at some other precise moment within the last eight years is open to reasoned debate. But whenever it happened, there is absolutely no doubt that we are now a bumbling, dysfunctional, nucular joke of a democratic circus whose better angels have disgustedly flown the coop.
"This is a major, major change," proudly announced Speaker Nancy Pelosi the day before yesterday, when it still looked like Congress -- which had been unconstitutionally bypassed and derided for years by the Bush administration as a collective body of indecision and ineptitude -- would act decisively and, well, eptly.
But, as it turned out, the Bush administration, of all things, was right, and Republican Senator Judd Gregg, the ranking member on the Budget Committee, was philosophically spot on: "If we don’t pass it, we shouldn’t be a Congress."
It's been 50 years so perhaps few remember John Kennedy's Pulitzer-prize-winning Profiles in Courage: its theme, that is, which was an internal, personal exploration of the essence of a working, representative democracy -- a case-by-case analysis of individual acts of decidedly unpopular responsibility over popular parroting.
Last night, Chuck Todd of MSNBC could think of only two House members -- two, out of 435 -- who were known to have voted their self-examined consciences rather than acted out of blind ideology or political cowardice. More than a few in tight reelection campaigns, especially, uncourageously collapsed and went with the mob. Simply put, their jobs were far more important to them than yours is.
There's no question that the congressional Pelosis and Franks and Dodds egregiously mislabeled this thing to begin with. They should never have characterized it as a "bailout" and from the get-go should have whacked that phraseology like the destructive mole it was.
It was a loan or investment -- a partially recoverable, if not fully recoverable or even profitable financial accommodation intended to unfreeze the credit markets for the next couple of years, on which -- Hello! -- the nation's economy depends. That would be our economy, not just Wall Street's.
I wouldn't have much cared if Congress had decided to hang every corrupt Wall Streeter from New York City's highest lampposts. But the legislation was never, for Christ's sake, about the Wall Streeters. In the hands of ideologues and demagogues from the right and left, however, the congressional debate morphed into almost nothing but.
Although the House may still set it right, yesterday was little more than a twisted saga of specious bipartisan opportunism -- yet more paradoxical proof that our national experiment in representative democracy too frequently works all too well. The multitudes' angry ignorance bubbled up and exploded in the lower chamber. Lord, how justified were the founders in their fears.
There was one upside, though. Actually, two. First, the price of oil dropped, although the accompanying downside there is that the price of oil dropped only because that commodities market no longer expects to be lubricating much of a global economy, thanks to the United States House of Representatives.
The other upside is that John S. McCain came out of this debacle looking like an even bigger idiot. Yes, he accomplished what heretofore had only seemed like the impossible.
McCain was out of this brawl, then in it, then out of it again, then pre-triumphant, then red-facedly back to blaming Barack Obama for the whole mess. His finger sure must be tired, what with all that pointing.
I thought the juxtaposed Washington Post headlines of yesterday afternoon said it best, all by themselves. The first was, "Obama Urges Calm," and right next to that was, "McCain Blames Dems." What a perfect encapsulation of their antipodal leadership styles in a crisis.
One might hope, if nothing else, that that encapsulation's thrust will trickle down into the masses' political consciousness. But who knows. McCain could yet figure a way to demagogue this thing before the vast throngs of ignorance that we so accurately call a representative democracy.
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