OVER THE CLIFF

What th' hell, Thelma, let's go over the cliff. It can't be any worse than watching the ridiculous minuet the donkeys and elephants in Washington and the talking heads there and in the Big Apple are engaged in. High school student councils across the nation do a better job of governing, and you remember what kind of dorks were on student council.

Besides, how bad can the likely consequences be? The nation would return to the tax rates of the later Clinton years. Remember those years? They were a time of budget surpluses, full employment, prosperity. W, draft-dodging Dick Cheney, and their myopic followers hadn't yet put the nation on a path to economic and fiscal disaster by cutting taxes−and consequently revenues−undertaking two wars on the nation's credit card, authorizing a prescription drug program for Medicare without paying for it, and in general making hedge fund managers look like responsible fiduciaries.

And for good measure, conducting foreign policy in a manner that would make Attila the Hun envious.

Barack is being criticized for not being a negotiator, for not buttering up the likes of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. Maybe there's something to the criticism, although making nice with the Boehners and McConnells of the world would be beyond the ability of most sane people. But the real problem does not appear to be making nice but ideological rigidity. The Republican party of the second decade of the 21st (and maybe last) Century is in the hands of the lowest common denominator. Egged on by Fox Noise, conservative talk radio, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, and their fellow travelers, the members of the lowest common denominator appear ready to take the nation into the economic abyss.

So why fight it? Let's join hands, stomp on the accelerator, and go over the edge. The uncertainty has an appeal that a future of partisan bickering, intransigence, nitpicking, and political gamesmanship lacks.