On CBS' "Face the Nation" this past Sunday, John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, did something that, for a politician on the Sunday political talk circuit, seems anathema: say something that not only sounds human but also makes sense.
"At the end of the day," Kasich said, "you look yourself in the mirror, and you say to yourself, did I do what was right for families and for children, and if I paid a political price, so what?...There's too much thinking about your party, yourself. It cannot be ideological....The people in Washington have got to put aside, you know, these, all this political consideration and start thinking about how they're going to feel about themselves when they leave."
What would drive a Republican governor in a critical election swing state that boasts the most powerful Republican lawmaker in Congress to make such a plea to the political parties to hold their cannon fire? He, like the rest of us, only has about 14.294 trillion reasons. That figure, of course, refers to the debt ceiling that appears to be on the verge of caving us all in if Congress cannot reach a deal by Aug. 2.
Make no mistake, this isn't like the NFL and (if you noticed) NBA lockouts that infest the ESPN ticker; this is far, far more serious. This fiasco, if not solved, has the power to shred America's pocketbook. For a nation that has already been battered by economic malaise, this could be the chair shot that leaves us down for the count.
We now call upon those on Capitol Hill to not treat this as a political game of chicken as the livelihoods of millions of Americans hang in the balance. They are not simply rhetorical pawns that can be moved around the board at will; they are the king you have been sworn to protect. To do otherwise would be, for the lack of a better word, chickenshit.
