The battle over spending, taxation and debt that has dominated the headlines in recent days is nothing new in either Washington, or the nation beyond that Beltway which subs as a kind of multi-lane Pale.
There is a sharp divide in our nation's politics, at least if you focus on each end of the spectrum. And in between those ends, the liberal Democrats on one side, and the Tea Party Republicans on the other, there is the great mass of America's citizenry, a group that is being pulled one way and then the other by the opposing ideological camps.
Lately, the ideology meter has been, like a thermometer in mid-summer, pushing the mercury against the glass seal. And just as we all get a little addled when the mercury soars, Americans in the great middle have been fretting, leaning one way then the next, reacting to the latest speech or chorus from Capitol Hill or, in some cases, trying desperately not to react at all.
When we vote for our political leaders we (ideally perhaps) expect them to work away on our behalf and not bother us very much until the next election rolls around. That's not the case in these tempestuous times. One after the other, congressional leaders stand before podiums and proclaim their nostrums with ponderous certainty on behalf of the "American people."
This is a reach. Each and every member of Congress has been elected by a tiny fraction of the population. The fact that politicians invoke the "people" - seemingly in their entirety - time after time is to avoid the truer picture that is a far narrower partisan, party interest.
Bottom line: the political collisions that have so dominated the headlines in recent days are not so much on behalf of "the American people," but over what each side believes is the kind of society in which the mass of the American people should be living in, and how to achieve this even in the face of disagreement from many of those same people.
This is the raw side of politics in a democracy. Those in the minority - as decided in free and fair elections - are required to accept the will of the majority for so long as the majority holds.
But where things get muddled for many - and this where American differs from many European models - is when the minority view appears to prevail.
This, too, is an aspect of our democracy that many might find hard to understand; but it does seem to be the case that has to be wiggle room for a more staunchly advocated minority view to hold sway, at least for a time.
In the case of reducing the nation's overall debt burden, there appears to be a rough consensus that this should be the course of action embraced by one and all, that being the parties, the president and the people.
It's the degree and details of reduction, however, that prompt open discord. And this is an argument that is not going to fade away anytime soon, not this side of the 2012 elections, and not the far side either.
Our nation. then, is facing a protracted era of belt tightening that will be decided in detail inside the aforementioned Beltway in the coming weeks and months.
It is to be hoped that leaner will not always entail meaner.
We feel confident that "the American people," hard pressed in hard times, and sorely distracted by the shriller voices among our political leaders as they are, will agree with this principle, at the very least.
