What happens to American politics if we default? Hello, third party.

Journalist Jeff Greenfield issues a surprising verdict against both parties

Jan. 20, 2013: He took his hand off the Bible, extended it to Chief Justice John Roberts, waited for the 21-gun salute and began to shake his head — but stopped himself, conscious of the TV cameras surrounding him. He still found it impossible to believe what was happening; then again, he found it just as hard to imagine the event that had brought him to this moment. Nobody believed it would occur — until it did.

Maybe the last-minute agreement would have worked if there had been more time, a week or two, to persuade, cajole, threaten and beg recalcitrant legislators into backing the jury-rigged deficit-debt-ceiling deal. Maybe if there hadn’t been so many lines drawn in the sand, such a long history of treating every political dispute as Armageddon.

Loading...

Comments

• Weigh In
• Corrections?

Personal Post

Gallery

 A collection of cartoons on the federal budget and the fight to get it right.

But on Sunday night, July 31, 2011, decades of toxic politics exploded. In the House Republican Caucus, freshman members of the Tea Party Caucus, threatened with primary challenges over insufficient budget-cutting zeal, joined with Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota in opposition to the deal. Among Democrats, virtually all 80 members of the Progressive Caucus lined up solidly against it. Even as they gathered for the critical vote, with its outcome in doubt, Fox News and MSNBC were both airing one-hour specials titled “Sellout!”

And with the measure five votes short as the count neared the end, several lawmakers signaled their intentions to switch their votes to no (“I’ll be damned,” said one, “if I’ll commit political suicide for a vote that’s going to lose anyway”).

At 2:30 on Monday morning, Aug. 1, 2011, the clerk of the House announced that the motion had failed. Within 24 hours, the government of the United States would be unable to pay its debts.

The political recriminations were as swift and ferocious as the economic fallout, which the hastily contrived debt-ceiling fix three days later did nothing to soften. The 1,400-point drop in the Dow, Moody’s move to downgrade the rating of federal debt, the fever spike in interest rates for mortgages and business loans, the delays in paying federal contractors, the impending layoffs — all had been predicted months before the debt limit was breached.

And the first wave of public reaction was equally predictable: Congress’s job-approval rating fell into the low teens, while President Obama’s dropped into the mid-20s. Nine in 10 Americans surveyed said they thought the country was on the wrong track (“The 10th one is in a coma,” Conan O’Brien quipped).

But then something else began to happen to American politics, something that turned a long-standing political fantasy into a reality. In election season after election season, the results had been blithely ascribed to the electorate’s powerful “anti-incumbent mood.” Yet, no matter how angry they became, voters never punished incumbents of both parties. In 1980, 1994 and 2010, they voted Democrats out — and virtually every Republican was left standing. In 1974, 2006 and 2008, they turned against Republicans — and just about every Democrat returned to office.