After the clowns-on-tiny-bicycles show that we have all just witnessed, which clown show obtained for us our debt ceiling deal, it would be easy for conservatives to think that it all was, in fact, just a show, just for show.
Since there was so much fuss and bother, with so little result, it is easy to assume the whole thing was a Washington DC-style charade. So much lunatic spending needs to be cut, and so little of it actually was, a reasonable conclusion is that this was all a gaudy display so that representatives of all stripes could claim they “passed something,” and that they truly are busy “doing the work of the American people.”
So there was a big battle, and at the end of the day the Tea Party achieved a victory of gaining a foot and a half of new territory — when there are hundreds of miles that need to be taken.
There are two ways to think of this. One is to believe that not much happened because it is not a real war, that our elected representatives are dressed in blue and gray, and that there is a lot of smoke and noise, but by the end of the day Gettysburg is still there, perfectly intact, and all the principal actors are seen as reenactors, climbing into their SUVs to drive home to whereever reenactors live.
But here is a better model for thinking about this — the front in the First World War. Not much was happening there either, if you are thinking about great territory gains. This is how we need to think of this budget battle, and the series of budget battles we are going to have over the next few years. There is going to be fierce fighting over every inch of territory, and it is going to take a awful lot to get anywhere.
The forces of fiscal incoherence are deeply entrenched in our ruling class. They are not going to be expelled unless they are thrown out, and they are not going to go quietly. So I would encourage those of us who are not in this fight to try to avoid looking like a civilian dandy asking a wounded veteran of the Somme “what’s taking you all so long?”