Fine work, boys and girls of the illustrious 112th Congress. You spent months squawking and ballistically howling about a non-emergency issue of your own hysterical fabrication, with which you prodded the nation close to banana republic status. Then, having subdued your mythological monster by making the fundamentals even worse, you reward yourselves with ... a month's vacation -- one untidy consequence of which actually does convert us into a banana republic.
Which is to say, you left your posts a trifle early, thus "idl[ing] tens of thousands of construction workers on airport projects around the country" and leaving the FAA to ask
dozens of airport inspectors ... to work without pay and to charge their government travel expenses to their personal credit cards to keep airports operating safely.
So the world's one remaining superpower -- an economic colossus unprecedented in global history -- now operates its air transportation system like the East St. Louis police department, which is sort of literally self-financing, with officers having purchased out of their own pockets their patrol-car radios, tires, and such.
Meanwhile, boys and girls of the illustrious 112th Congress, there remains another untidy consequence of your vacationing employment, which is the chronic absence of others'. That 9.2-percent thing holds, and throughout the next couple of years it's likely to get worse, in part because of your tangible slaying of a notional monster.
Which leads to a suggestion, for an audience of one.
No objective analyst would argue that President Obama escaped political injury throughout the bloody course of, and now the dazed aftermath of, the debt-ceiling fraud. And no objective analyst would argue that some extraordinary degree of presidential reset is unnecessary. And what better timing than -- now; specifically, later this week, when more horrible job numbers come tumbling in.
The president could call a special session of Congress; he could tell it Members they must struggle their way through the idle construction projects at their local airport and return posthaste to Washington to begin resolving the real crisis: the jobs crisis.
He could tell Republicans to answer their own question: "Where are the jobs?" He could remind them of the 2009 stimulus package they watered down, which brought us to this keenly regrettable point, and he could further concede that another but genuine stimulus package -- though such would be his preferred option -- is off the Republicans' table (along with every other intelligent idea that has ever addressed any troublesome occasion).
He could also tell them that his hands have been tied: that he signed their cretinous, fiscally constraining legislation only so that the nation would be spared instant banana republicanism. So the ball, as they say, is in their court. It's up to them. They can undo their recent imbecility, so that further stimulus becomes feasible; they can slap a one-time surcharge on the wealthiest among us, to finance a jobs program; they can extend the payroll tax cuts and federal unemployment benefits. For that matter they can go to hell, for all the president cares -- but meet they will; there shall be no vacationing while millions haven't that paid chance.
Would there be more than a dollop of political theatrics in all this? -- and a huge serving of the politically impossible? Of course. But therein lies the politically pragmatic point: Republicans' deafening protests about convening to create jobs might well be the final straw on the breaking back of the wholly disgusted body politic.
And that's when political pragmatism begins to convert to pragmatic policy -- next year, bye-bye Republicans, hello genuine relief.