Welcome to the Zero Hour

Until Alzheimer's sets in, I will never forget the feeling in the pit of my stomach on the morning of 9/11 when I heard that the Pentagon had been attacked. For a brief moment, I thought, "so, is this how it begins?" By the end of the day it was clearly not World War, but it was also clearly a changed world.

When I read of the failure of the bailout bill, I got much the same feeling. While 9/11 would ultimately shatter the broadly bipartisan post-Cold War consensus on foreign policy, the economy saw only modest changes. The recession was brief and attenuated, and Wall Street, K Street, and Main Street remained well-aligned. While Nancy Pelosi may yet gin up a bill that can pass, and Bush will probably sign anything, I think this will come to be seen as the moment that the economic consensus of the past two decades finally failed. I have little idea what comes next, but I feel deep down that it will be very different from what we have come to know.

Politically, I now consider the election to be like a late-season game between two teams with no chance of making the playoffs. The next four years will be driven by events on a grand scale over which even the President has only nominal control. McCain himself admits to limited engagement with large economic issues, while Obama's track record could be written in a fortune cookie. We have been living lo these many a year with a wolf chained to a tree in our yard, and have only approached close enough to throw him some meat and occasionally pat him on the head at the end of his leash.

The Republican Study Committee in the House may have just made the greatest political bet of the century. Responding to constituents who could not see past the nose of their hatred for Wall Street's crony-capitalism, they have decided to unleash the wolf and hope that he does not make us his first meal. If they turn out to be right--if despite all the warnings of Apocalypse, the country continues to function as it has the past few weeks--then we may see the rise of a new economic conservatism divorced from Wall Street, which these days gives more money to Democrats anyway. If they turn out to be wrong, then what follows will make the politics of the past 16 years look tame. Those who think the GOP is extremist now would likely not be pleased by what would most likely replace it--a crudely populist, unapologetically nativist party more in the mold of Pat Buchanan than Sarah Palin or George W. Bush.

I don't have the slightest idea how--or where--all this leads. Pelosi may yet pull a rabbit out of her hat that forestalls and draws the moment of reckoning over a period of years. A few days of contemplating the abyss may spur private parties to find a path to calm in the absence of massive federal intervention. The US economy may yet show long-forgotten strengths that see us through more serenely than expected. Perhaps the warnings of disaster are merely the cries of the greatest thieves warning that the police are surrounding the building. On the evening of 9/11, I would not have taken the bet that seven years could pass without another attack on home soil. It may be that we are in the moment of maximum panic. Or it may be just the beginning. Either way I suspect we will some day tell our grandchildren what it was like to live in the years immediately ahead of us.