Photo illustration: Ed Johnson

“One day, whole tribe falls off cliff.”

—Chief Wild Eagle, Hekawi Indians

Wow, that was a close one, wasn’t it?  We just missed going over that fiscal cliff!

Or did we? Technically, we walked right off it, with no compromise on the budget officially voted on and signed into law before the end of 2012.

But then, that was an intrinsic part of this whole tortured endgame. By letting the old George W. Bush income tax rates expire with the old year—and replacing them with new rates—both parties have now magically changed what is really a $620 billion tax hike over the next ten years into a mind-boggling $3.9 trillion tax cut.  Hurrah!  The magic of politics.

Barring some mad tea party revolt in the Republican-controlled House, the great budget compromise will be completed shortly and signed by President Obama. (The Constitution, a document Republicans claim to consider sacred and insist must be followed literally, specifies that the budget is supposed to originate in the House. But apparently such principles didn’t hold up to the greater need for John Boehner to hang on to his speakership.)

The deal reached in Washington has its flaws and its bright spots—such as the fact that unemployment benefits will be extended for another year, thereby aiding those Americans in most desperate need of help. In any case, it will no doubt be hailed as a sign that we can all get along, and calm the markets until the next manufactured crisis—the need to extend the debt limit—which won’t occur until ... next month.

Lost in all this maneuvering is any rigorous analysis of why it’s so imperative that we conclude a long-term agreement to reduce the deficit right now, while we’re still crawling out of a devastating recession.

Thomas Friedman at The New York Times has been insisting forever that any budget deal should be a “grand bargain,” in which we cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, then use the money both to pay down the deficit and to invest heavily in infrastructure and technological research. He likes to call this “eating our vegetables,” or “taking our medicine,” and insists it will lay the foundation for a new era of American prosperity. The trouble is that it’s hard to see exactly how even roads and a new tech boom will help impoverished seniors desperate for health care. And, oh yeah, there’s the little problem that Republicans are insisting that any new revenue go toward reducing the deficit, period.

N. Gregory Mankiw, senior economic advisor to both W. and Mitt, warned us in the Times this weekend that “At some point, investors at home and abroad will start questioning our ability to service our debts without creating steep inflation.”

My goodness! When will this happen?

Well, Mr. Mankiw admits, “It’s hard to say precisely when ... and even whether it will strike in this president’s term or the next.” But don’t worry: “when it does [happen], it won’t be pretty. The United States will find itself at the brink of an unprecedented fiscal crisis.”

Deficit pimps Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, skipping between comic YouTube videos and $40,000-a-pop speeches, titled their risibly portentous report on the subject “The Moment of Truth,” and insist in its preamble that “Deep down, every American knows we face a moment of truth once again.”

See that? Who needs reason or logic? If you’re a true American, you’ll know it in your heart. And have no doubt: “The problem is real. The solution will be painful. There is no easy way out. Everything must be on the table. Washingtonmust lead.”

What Messrs. Bowles and Simpson want is actually another cliché, the full “burn this village to save it” solution: $2.9 trillion in spending cuts and $2.6 trillion in tax increases of one sort or another over the next 10 years.

The alternative? You heard it all through the presidential campaign: “The contagion of debt that began in Greece and continues to sweep through Europe shows us clearly that no country is immune. If the U.S. does not put its house in order, the reckoning will be sure and the devastation severe.”

Right—because the United States is just like Greece, a poor nation of 10 million people that doesn’t control its own currency.

A better model might be another debt-swept European nation. That’s doughty old England, still clinging to the pound and coming off more than 30 years of just the sort of Thatcherite and New Labour economics so widely admired in the American media.

The U.K. plunged into an even steeper recession than we had, at almost the same moment and for much the same reasons: a burst housing bubble leading to a major financial crisis. By 2010, it had also pretty much matched our own sluggish recovery, the U.K.’s economy growing slowly but surely.

But about the same time “The Moment of Truth” came out, the U.K.’s Conservative-led government actually imposed the ruthless austerity program that Messrs. Simpson and Bowles advocated. This included massive social welfare cuts, the slashing of nearly all government departments by at least 25 percent, wage freezes for the remaining public employees and a wide array of tax increases.

All of this succeeded—in immediately plunging the nation into a double-dip recession. As the Boston Globe reported Sunday, Britain’s unemployment rate surpassed our own last October; it is now 60 percent above what it was at the start of the first “dip” back in 2008, and shows no signs of slowing. The country is devastated, with families mobbing its food banks.

“It’s a hard road, but we are getting there,” insisted George Osborne, the hard-right British chancellor of the exchequer. “Britain is on the right track—and turning back now would be a disaster.”

But this statement is as bizarre as Mr. Mankiw’s contention that we must inflict more human suffering now, out of fear that it might occur sometime before 2017—or maybe after. Economics is a function of time as well as money, not some theoretical quest. Years of mass unemployment and neglected public investment can never truly be recovered, either in shattered personal lives or the life of a nation. They mean emptied bank accounts, foreclosed houses, foregone opportunities, rusting job skills, despair and rage.

“Austerity” only makes it more difficult—if not impossible—to climb out of a recession. In the end, it’s difficult not to see all this rhetoric of pain and hard roads and vegetable-eating and heartfelt truths as anything but what Dick Cheney once trashed conservation as: “a sign of personal virtue, but not a sufficient basis for sound ... policy.”

None of these commentators or economists or public officials will experience any actual pain from anything they’re proposing, nor will anyone they know. In the meantime, neither they, nor President Obama, nor the Republicans offer us even an acknowledgement of the central matter at hand throughout the Western world: how do you keep enormous, mass-consumer economies afloat while simultaneously eradicating their industrial bases, shrinking their public sectors, depressing wages and subsidizing the most irresponsible financial institutions in modern history?

Photo illustration by Ed Johnson.

The conventional wisdom insists that President Obama has all the leverage right now over the Republicans in their negotiation for a “grand bargain” to close the budget deficit. Bolstered by his smashing election victory, gains by the Democrats in both houses of Congress and a changing popular mood, this would seem like the ideal moment to forge a deal largely on the president’s terms—one that would raise federal income tax rates on the wealthiest Americans while cutting spending and “reforming” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Proof of Mr. Obama’s upper hand is seen in the dropping stock of anti-tax zealot (and forced-abortion apologist) Grover Norquist. One after another, Republicans even in deep red states have been forswearing their previous oaths to Mr. Norquist never to vote for any tax increase. Surely, the president—renowned “Zen master,” and player of “three-dimensional chess”—hovers on the brink of another improbable victory, one that will secure his historical legacy. Right?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact it’s Mr. Obama, not the Republicans, who is caught between a rock and a hard place. To hit our tenuously recovering economy right now with tax increases (even on the very wealthiest) and massive cuts in federal spending is a terrible idea. It could easily push us into a “double-dip” recession. To cut entitlement benefits and push back the age at which Americans can retire—possibly all the way to 69—will also be economically disastrous, not to mention unspeakably cruel and a grotesque betrayal of the president’s own base. It could split the Democratic party beyond repair.

The Republican leadership surely must understand this. What’s more, they have the “fiscal cliff” at their back—the bill they passed during the budget crisis they manufactured last year that mandates severe, automatic, across-the-board spending cuts if no bargain on the deficit is reached. This would likely dip us back into recession as well, and probably set off chaos in the financial markets.

It is widely thought that going over the fiscal cliff will rebound worst against the Republicans, since they will be seen as more intransigent than ever. But what do they care? The one branch of the federal government controlled by the GOP is the House, where nearly all their members hold safe seats in deeply conservative districts. They can probably weather the national outrage against diving off the “cliff” even if it does mean another recession, and they know it.

So, if President Obama fails to reach an agreement on the deficit, he’ll probably set off a worldwide financial panic, and plunge the country back into recession. If he does reach an agreement, he’ll likely alienate most of his own party ... and plunge the country back into recession.

The various, “outside-the-box” alternatives now being offered are no more appealing. House Speaker John Boehner and other leading Republicans have been floating the idea of raising additional tax revenue by closing loopholes instead of increasing rates, so they can kinda sorta say they didn’t really raise taxes.

But closing all the loopholes in existence won’t raise enough revenue. If this approach ever becomes law, it should be called “The Washington Lobbyists Full-Employment Act.” Essentially, this was the idea behind the big Reagan tax reform compromise of 1986: income tax rates were lowered and simplified, in return for eliminating most exemptions. But as the last quarter-century has proved, there’s nothing easier for a lobbyist to do than slip a loophole back into the tax code a little down the line.

Most professional economists would prefer a “tax on consumption” rather than income, through either a national sales tax or a value-added tax at various stages of production.

I can never understand why this is such a great idea, since any capitalist economy is driven by consumption, whereas great accumulated wealth gives people an inherent—and often unfair—advantage. Shouldn’t we be trying to encourage people to make as much money as they can ... then even out the results a little, so that those who have made more can’t use that added income to, say, buy lobbyists and economists to espouse policies in their interests?

On a more practical level, any sort of sales or consumption tax ought to be entitled, “The Mafia Restoration Act.” That’s because of the thousands of industrious citizens who will purchase cargo vans and start actively driving goods in from Canada to sell on the black market if any such tax is ever passed. (Full disclosure: I, too, intend to buy a truck and start shipping goods in from Canada if this happens.)

So where does that leave us? What should a true Zen master do when faced with this menu of unsavory choices?

He should fold.

That’s right. President Obama should offer to give in and support extending the Bush tax cuts for another year, if—and this is a mighty big “if”—the Republicans agree to abolish the fiscal cliff.

Getting an extension of the payroll tax suspension and unemployment payments would also be a good idea, but this one concession is imperative: get rid of the cliff.

Think about it. With the economy showing sure signs of recovery at last, President Obama will only be in a better position a year from now. As Europe insists on sticking to its own austerity programs and China’s economy continues to slow, we will likely be in a post-World War II situation—the only promising investment opportunity left standing. International capital will pour in, accelerating our recovery and starting to shrink the deficit “naturally.”

A year from now, with the economy humming along at last, there would also be no fiscal cliff, no need to slash benefits for seniors or make them die in harness. If Republicans don’t want to accept his budget terms, the president can simply let the Bush tax cuts expire at last.

This scenario would mean higher taxes for the middle- and working classes, which is not ideal. But they will be much better able to afford them during an economic boom. Meanwhile, the rich will at last be forced to pay the extortionate federal income tax rate of 39 percent they labored under during the Clinton years. And all of these new payments will at least continue to ratchet down the debt, appeasing the deficit hand-wringers without the need to punish the elderly and the indigent.

This is what a president who is really a Zen master—instead of, say, a diffident individual always willing to accept the conventional political and economic wisdom—would do. Which is President Obama? We’ll soon find out.

For three consecutive days last week, I woke up before 9 a.m. without the use of an alarm. This has never happened before. It’s not because I’m bright-eyed and looking to seize a brand-new day’s worth of opportunities, but because I'm an addict. A filthy, filthy blood-eyed, rot-tooth addict, and the new shipment just came in. CSPAN’s coverage of Congress comically attempting to do something important begins at the crack of dawn, and I hate to miss even a second of it. 
That’s right, our completely broken federal government has begun its latest round of fiscal negotiations in search of a big deal, before some apocalyptic fate entirely of the politicians' own creation kicks in.

There's nothing I can do to turn away, reveling in all of the fake twists and posturing and lying and shifts in leverage. It gets more embarrassing for the country each time, and so I get more immersed in it. Grimy, cynical, awful budget negotiation crack—it is military-grade nerd meth, watching this horror show play out.

The "fiscal cliff" negotiations represent the fourth such circus in the past two years. The two parties take it upon themselves to resolve a bundle of major budgetary issues against the backdrop of a ticking clock that, were it to hit zero, would release an army of 10 million demons into the night. Only under such a threat, the theory goes, can these two parties with completely different ideologies but a shared strategic philosophy of "fuck over the other's base" come together to pass whatever biggies are coming up on the calendar.

It started with the tax negotiations in the 2010 lame-duck session, under threat of full expiration of the Bush tax cuts. The parties finally agreed, in the last days of the session, to delay all major tax decisions another two years. In April 2011, after Republicans took control of the House, it was about funding the government for six months and maybe cutting some spending in the process, or endure a government shutdown. Ten minutes before their deadline, they decided to keep spending pretty much the same for the next six months.

The next month's debate was about raising the debt ceiling. You remember that one, right? It was that funny one where the House Republicans threatened to arbitrarily destroy the global economy forever if they didn't get a constitutional amendment to ban the Democratic party's policies, basically. That stupid plot by stupid people who hadn't yet read their federal policymaker Cliffs Notes led to more last-minute flailing can-kicking. And now here we are, trying to resolve all of this accumulated, punted crap at once before a bunch of recessions and Mayan apocalypses ruin whatever's left of the Greatest Country in the History of the World.

I've followed each of these sagas closely. My addiction is now long past the point where it should've exploded my brain, but here I am, tweaking out on all the latest minutiae again.

Here's how fiscal negotiations addiction works its dark magic: I understand at this point that the day-in, day-out drama of it all is entirely a theater production where the lead actors pander to their bases until the very last second, when they decide to maintain the status quo as planned all along. But the clearer this becomes—and it really can't get much clearer—the more engrossed I am with the day-in, day-out drama that I know to be fictional.

This is the best month ever.

I live-tweeted C-SPAN from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Monday, for free, when no one asked me to.

Everyone was writing off Grover Norquist for dead, along with his famous anti-tax pledge, after a few congressional Republicans said they'd consider increasing revenue by eliminating certain tax deductions—a direct violation Norquist’s pledge! President Obam  already seemed to have the leverage at this point, with his ability to wait until after the fiscal cliff to draw up his own tax plan if he didn't get one he liked. Now he saw his leverage get even more leverage-y. I read every article on the Internet about this. I kept another tab for TPM reporter Brian Beutler's site, refreshing it all day. He is so smart about leverage, Brian—my go-to leverage guy.

And then, a few more hours on Twitter, reading about tax deductions and cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security beneficiaries and tweeting one-liners about them.

A Republican congressman then pointed out that his party would have more leverage if it passed Obama's middle-class-only tax cuts before the end of the year and dealt with the spending cut side in January, after Obama had already given up his leverage. Could it work? I spent an hour on Twitter bombarding poor Brian with leverage questions.

I read about taxes and leverage and tweeted out links for 30 hours over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday. Don't worry, I took some breaks… to read more of the fancy, think-tank tax and leverage stuff on the Internet, that is. Mark Schmitt of the Roosevelt Institute, for one, is a delicacy. "It's a very complicated argument, but what it comes down to is this," he writes in an article about budget baselines and interest groups' scoring methods or something. "Letting the tax cuts expire by law would actually achieve many of the goals of tax reform… But if the tax reform is already half-completed, there's less room for classic tax reform in a grand bargain."

Yes! How can you say you’re doing tax reform if your top condition is to keep most of the Bush tax cuts in place? The idea of the parties ever wanting to radically upend the status quo in a mutually sacrifical “Grand Bargain” is a dirty lie! It was all starting to make sense, and I just needed to read a few more articles and tweets in the morning to discover the full truth...

…But then I woke up at 2 p.m. on Thursday, missing everything.

And it really didn't fucking matter.

There are hundreds or thousands of other fellow fiscal negotiations junkies along with me. I see you there, on Twitter—don't think I can't tell.

This is bad. We've got to put an end to this sort of behavior before it wastes us.

I'm talking about you, Congress. Please stop attempting to craft these big budget deals that you’ll never execute. The negotiation process makes for some excellent, guilty-pleasure reality TV, but booming C-SPAN ratings aren’t the best indicator of a job well done.

(Photo: The Onion)

In a "breaking news" story in The Onion this morning, the satirical newspaper reported Congress took a group of touring school kids hostage in the Capitol rotunda, demanding $12 trillion by 6 p.m. or they'll shoot a kid every hour. For once, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) are cooperating to reduce the deficit. 

The Onion is also live-tweeting the "hostage situation", the lastest update being:

"Police helicopter just ordered to pull back after Rep. Trent Franks tried to take it down with a shotgun #CongressHostage"

In the next 24 hours, we predict someone on cable news will demand that The Onion apologize to the nation of Norway.

Boehner and Obama.

It would almost seem that the stars had finally aligned. After weeks of stalled talks and contentious meetings between House Republicans and Democrats that escalated into a public spat between Speaker John Boehner and President Obama, a bill finally made it through the House and into the Senate, where it was speedily approved Tuesday morning thanks to backing from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Majority Leader Harry Reid, just in time for the Cinderella-esque stroke-of-midnight deadline. The anthropomorphic bill from Schoolhouse Rock! had nothing on this drama.

So, the good news is that the country isn’t going to default on its debt obligations, which puts us at least one step ahead of Teresa Giudice from the Real Housewives of New Jersey. The bad news is that just as everyone was making nice and learning to compromise, Vice President Joe Biden made an offhand comment that Congress’s Tea Party Republicans “acted like terrorists” during negotiations, an ill-timed gaffe that not even the heartwarming sight of Gabrielle Giffords casting her first vote on the House floor after nearly getting assassinated in January could correct. Oh, Joe. To paraphrase The Princess Bride, you fell victim to one of the classic blunders—of which the most famous one is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia,” and an only slightly less well-known one is: Never go in against the Tea Party when debt is on the line.

But at least the Dems aren’t buying Twitter followers, which is more than we can say for beleaguered 2012 hopeful Newt Gingrich. After bragging to the Marietta Daily Journal that, despite abysmal poll numbers, he has “six times as many Twitter followers as all the other candidates combined,” a former staffer submitted an anonymous tip to Gawker claiming that 80% of Mr. Gingrich’s 1.3 million followers are either inactive or dummy accounts (this figure was later amended by networking firm PeekYou to a whopping 92%). File this under #YouKnowYouWon’tWinTheNominationWhen …

Also stepping in it this week: Bronx principal Frank Borzellieri, a white supremacist who, despite having published racist essays, somehow worked at a largely black and Latino Catholic school for two years before anyone noticed; Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who did not do a very good job of apologizing to the vacation rental company’s disgruntled clients whose apartments were trashed (it’s O.K., now you can rent swaths of Lower East Side grass for $50/hour, courtesy of N.Y.C.’s own Timeshare Backyard!); British comedian Johnnie Marbles, who got sentenced to six weeks in jail for memorably pie-ing Rupert Murdoch during July’s News Corp. hearing in Parliament; and the M.T.A., which is responsible for screwing up repairs and slowing service, according to a joint report released last weekend by state and city comptrollers Thomas DiNapoli and John Liu. (And here we thought we were just getting a complimentary sauna with our subway fare.)

So perhaps we were too hasty about the whole “stellar alignment” thing. Turns out mercury is in retrograde, and not to get all Dionne Warwick on you, but something has seemed … off the past few days. First, in the midst of an oppressive heat wave, baseball-size hail rained down on Queens (adding insult to injury for the hapless Mets). Then, a peacock escaped from the Central Park zoo and began terrorizing (read: sitting calmly on) a Fifth Avenue window ledge. Not one but two adult men made the news for wearing inappropriate full-body animal costumes (but on the upside, only one, David Wu, was a member of Congress). Mark Zuckerberg added a creepy pregnancy feature to Facebook. And just as the debt ceiling legislation went through, assuaging Wall Street’s fears about market stability, the Dow dropped 265 points. Maybe it’s just our bad fortune.

Breivick.

Two things tend to be givens in the modern-day 24-hour news cycle: One, that something sad and tragic will invariably happen; and two, that when something sad and tragic happens, someone with a large social media following will not hesitate to immediately crack an inappropriate joke about it. (Too soon? Never on Twitter!)

When Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, Sofitel maid Nafissatou Diallo, revealed her identity for the first time in Newsweek’s cover story, Esquire—ever the gentleman—took the opportunity to use the alleged rape as a jumping-off point for a service-y web post about oral sex. “As we’ve learned over the years ... a blow job need not be degrading or hurtful, for either party,” the magazine wrote in the article, which has since been deleted but which was teased on Twitter as “How to get a better blowjob than #DSK.”

Of course, that tactlessness pales in comparison to Glenn Beck’s reaction to the massacre in Norway last Friday, in which anti-Muslim right wing nationalist Anders Breivik set off a large bomb in Oslo and then went on a shooting spree at a Labor Party youth summer camp on a nearby island, killing in total at least 76 people (at last count). One would think that the guilty party in this scenario was obvious. And yet Mr. Beck, who regrettably still has time to pontificate on the radio between penning bestselling children’s books about itchy Christmas gifts, took to the airwaves Monday to compare the camp victims to Hitler youth. “I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics?” Mr. Beck asked. “Disturbing.” In related news, the Tampa Liberty School, a weeklong Tea Party day camp modeled after Mr. Beck’s very own 9/12 Project, recently finished its inaugural session.

Yet even more tragic than small children in Florida using hard candies to learn about the gold standard was the untimely death of Amy Winehouse at age 27, presumably from drug and alcohol abuse. Some fans cried; some—in a well-meaning but probably inappropriate vigil—left bottles of vodka and beer bearing hand-written messages outside of Ms. Winehouse’s north London home. Missouri congressman Bill Long, on the other hand, chose to use the singer’s death as a plea to resolve debt ceiling talks. “No one could reach #AmyWinehouse before it was too late. Can anyone reach Washington before it’s too late? Both addicted—same fate???” he tweeted on Monday, prompting international vitriol. (Esquire couldn’t resist an opportunity here, either. On Monday it published an appreciation of Ms. Winehouse’s ex, Blake Fielder-Civil, and his remarkable ability to remain stylish in the face of tragedy.)

Speaker John Boehner neglected to comment on the capitol’s sobriety, but did seem to drown his own sorrows in platitudes over the weekend, announcing to whoever would listen that President Barack Obama “wants a blank check” and “moved the goalpost.”

And speaking of goalposts, the NFL lockout is over, which means that football is back! Not that it ever really left, because we’re in the off-season. But still! It’s kind of like Bill Keller at The Times—even though he keeps on quitting, he never goes anywhere. Just four months after debuting as Hugo Lindgren’s controversial magazine columnist, Mr. Keller has announced that he will leapfrog over to the op-ed page in September, around the time that he cedes his executive editor desk to Jill Abramson. The difference between his old gig and his new one, presumably, will be that the op-ed rate of correction is somewhat more forgiving (Mr. Keller is currently averaging just over 41 percent, which WWD helpfully points out is about eight times worse than Jayson Blair).

Of course, even when good news seeps across the transom—just as raw sewage has been inconspicuously seeping out into the Hudson—someone tries to ruin it for everybody else. Case in point: one day after New York’s first legal gay marriages were performed at City Hall, a conservative group filed a suit against the New York state legislature, alleging that standard voting procedures were broken in order to pass the Marriage Equality Act. It’s unlikely to make an impact, but it’s distracting and destructive, serving as yet another reminder that sometimes, despite what the M.T.A. tells us, when we see something, we probably shouldn’t say anything at all.

It’s time for them to stop talking to us and to engage each other in the spirit of cooperation that the President cited in his presentation. The ideologues in both parties are not going to be happy with the final result, since they are invested in dogma, not compromise. The Tea Party types on the Republican side would rather see the nation slip into default to prove a point. The entitlement-loving lefties on the Democratic side would rather look the other way as the nation continues to spend far beyond its means.

Either way, people are going to be unhappy. That is the nature of compromise.

So it is incumbent on leaders to lead, not to calculate, not to maneuver, not to grandstand. If the nation does default on Aug. 2, chances are good that the American public will pin the blame on both parties, rather than identify a single villain. Voters simply are not engaged enough in Beltway politics to sort out the details of the debt ceiling. All they know—and, frankly, this is the root of the matter—is that their elected representatives seem incapable of governing. That’s bad for all concerned.

It is instructive to compare the paralysis in Washington with the energy exhibited in Albany over the past seven months. In New York, a governor and leaders of the state legislature understood that the vitality of state government depended on tackling, rather than evading, hard issues. They did so through negotiation and compromise.

It is a measure of changing times that Albany can now teach Washington a thing or two about governance.

It’s time for the Beltway crowd to stop giving speeches. We already know what’s at stake. If the worst happens, there will be plenty of blame to spread around.

House Speaker John Boehner was in his Ohio district yesterday, and told ABC News "I don't think the big oil companies need to have the oil depletion allowances, but for small, independent, oil and gas producers, if they didn't have this, there'd be even less exploration in America than there is today."

Today Senator Chuck Schumer -- a key figure in shaping the Democrats policy and messaging -- latched onto part of Boehner's statement, and tried to drive a wedge between Boehner and his Republican conference. 

Schumer, in a public statement, said he's glad that "gas hitting four dollars per gallon seems to have finally caused Speaker Boehner to see the light on the insanity of providing subsidies to profit-soaked big oil companies."

Schumer added:

Senate Republican leaders should follow his example, and stop their senseless filibusters against attempts to repeal these giveaways. At a time when we have a record deficit, it makes no sense to keep rewarding oil companies for socking it to consumers at the pump.  These subsidies are a relic of a time when oil was $17 per barrel and oil companies needed incentives to drill.  That time has long since ended.

Schumer is, of course, dutifully ignoring Boehner's spokesman, who is now fighting to put his boss' comments into context.

Update: "I was heartened that Speaker Boehner yesterday expressed openness to eliminating these tax subsidies for the oil and gas industry," Obama wrote in a letter to legislative leaders, which was just released by the White House.

Also shut down last week was the short but memorable tenure of Cathie Black as schools chancellor. Ms. Black resigned after only 97 days in office, on the heels of a new report citing her dismal 17 percent approval rating (for context, 77 percent of people polled in Rockefeller Center by Us Weekly approved of Khloe Kardashian's choice to wear a body-hugging bandage dress designed to resemble piano keys). Mayor Bloomberg accepted "full responsibility" for the fact that Ms. Black, a magazine executive who had no experience in education and sent her own children to private school, had to be replaced with Dennis Walcott, a former kindergarten teacher and the current deputy mayor for education who is himself a product of the New York City public-school system. But, as Ms. Black herself might say, it was a Sophie's Choice.

Perhaps even more shocking than the Blackout that clogged news wires on Thursday was the announcement that Matt Lauer, everyone's favorite tall, glib drink of water, might be leaving The Today Show after 14 years to (maybe?) host a syndicated talk show with CBS defector and funky chicken aficionado Katie Couric. Meredith Vieira is rumored to be leaving, too, but now, unless she ups her game with a Glenn Beck cross-country travelogue, no one will care. And Regis Philbin, who, at 79, is older than both drive-in movie theaters and the electron microscope, supposedly has his eye on a solo show once he bids adieu to Live With Regis and Kelly later this year. (We hear he's in talks with Harpo, and none too soon--who better to revive Oprah's otiose OWN network than Reeg, the man who, much to Ryan Seacrest's dismay, holds the Guinness World Record for the most time spent in front of a television camera?) Of course, this all begs the question: Whom do we watch now while discreetly reducing the elliptical incline every morning? Pat Kiernan is sexy in a Greg Kinnear hand-puppet kind of a way, but he's not for everyone.

But even as the very cornerstones of our society threaten to crumble to a dust finer than the high-grade narcotics dusting the banquettes of the Boom Boom Room, even as we get mad as hell and entertain notions of refusing to take it anymore (RIP, Sidney Lumet), maybe by signing a MoveOn.org petition, some things simply refuse to shut down. Thanks to his Wikileaking Ukrainian nurse, we learned that Muammar Qaddafi still listens to cassette tapes--quaint! The Boston Red Sox broke their 0-6 losing streak, beating the Yankees two games out of three in a series at Fenway this weekend. The Real Housewives of New York clambered out of their gilded short bus for yet another season of Bravo's pinot grigio-fueled ego trip. And good ol' Mitt Romney officially tossed his hat into the 2012 primary ring, forming a presidential exploratory committee entreating his followers to "Believe in America." Because if the fibers of our democracy can't remain strong enough for a busload of middle-schoolers to snicker at the phallic splendor of the Washington monument, what are we left with, really?

He plucked the New York Post from a neatly arranged stack on the right side of his desk, and considered the cover for a moment--"Jesus, Carl Kruger with a gay lover," he said--before turning to a two-page spread on his hearing. 

Mr. King smiled as he read, then picked up the phone and dialed his chief of staff, Kevin Fogarty, in the next room.

"The Post story is great, and also Rich Lowry's column," Mr. King said into the receiver. "He ends up by saying: 'Democrats made King's first hearing a circus. He nonetheless achieved an important inadvertent success: exposing his critics as hysterical fools.'"

Mr. King, who recently retook the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, let out a little laugh and hung up the phone.

"I like that," he said.

The other papers were less glorious.

Staring up from Mr. King's desk were the pained eyes of Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, whose voice had faltered during his pre-hearing testimony when he recounted the story of Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a Muslim New York police cadet who died responding to the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11. In the hearing room, the photographers had swarmed the moment, and Mr. King held up one front page photo after another.

"I'm assuming it's sincere," Mr. King said. "Four and a half hours of hearings yesterday. The whole thing, the story: him breaking down. He's not on the committee, I invited him as a courtesy, breaks down crying-over a person he never even met, which I accept as being real-but to make that the whole hearing? A pre-hearing statement?"

Mr. King was not entirely surprised.

"I was on Channel 9 last night and the reporter said, 'How do you feel, you made Keith Ellison cry?'" (Outside Mr. King's door, the phones were ringing incessantly, and a young assistant was answering the same question: "Did you watch the hearing, sir? We didn't make anyone cry.")

The Daily News was particularly disappointing. It quoted the mother of Mr. Hamdani, who called Mr. King's hearing "an indictment of American Muslims."

"I got her in the hearing room," Mr. King explained. "[Long Island Congressman] Tim Bishop called me, said, 'A woman in my district disagrees with the hearing, her son was killed in 9/11, can you get her in the hearing room?' We not only got her in the hearing room, we got her in the first row. I said, 'Of course.' And then she's in the Daily News attacking me today."

Mr. King had hoped, after months of heated rhetoric, that the subject of the hearing--"The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response"--might be the crux of the story, for at least one day. He had tried to make the hearing beyond reproach, granting Mr. Ellison unlimited time to speak, inviting four Democrats who didn't sit on the committee to participate and, in a personal triumph, biting his tongue as Democrats assailed him and his inquiry.

Instead, the papers reflected a general sense of confusion at what the hearing had proved and why exactly it was necessary.

Mr. King read the headline on the cover of The Washington Post--"Lots of drama, less substance"--and held up the front page of The New York Times: "Ellison crying. '[Terror] Hearing puts lawmakers in harsh light.'"

The Joe McCarthy comparisons were all there, too. A cartoon in one paper had McCarthy's ghost standing behind Mr. King, yielding the balance of his time, and a Bill Press column wondered when Mr. King might inquire: "Are you now or have you ever been a Muslim?"

Politico wrote that after all the hype, the hearing was "something of a dud."

"So they have me criticized for not being like Joe McCarthy," Mr. King said. "Great stuff."

Still, the day's coverage was something of an improvement.

"It was mindless and inane going up to the hearing," he said. "And now, it's mixed."

Mr. King said he hadn't expected all the press attention, and cited an interview with The Observer, just after the November elections, when he first mentioned his plans, deep into a half-hour interview, on what he might do when he retook the gavel.

"If I was trying to do a McCarthy hearing, if I was trying to do any of these extravaganzas they're talking about, I don't think I would have buried it with a Queens mumble in the middle of a conversation with the first reporter who is talking to me after the election," he said.

"I mean, you know, I would have said, 'You know what I'm going to do, Reid? Goddamn it, I'm going to get these Muslims, I'm going to have this fucking hearing, I'm going to really go after them and I'm going to expose them once and for all for what they really are.' No, I think I was talking about chemical plant security and this and that, to get the committee more focused."

He conceded that the attention might raise his political profile, but dismissed the idea that he might use it as a platform for higher office.

"It might help for that, but I really don't see myself doing that," he said. "I think I'd be a great senator, I'd be a great governor, I'd be a great president, but I don't see it happening. The country will have to look elsewhere."

"Yesterday, I was going down the hall. O.K., the political part of me--this is great, I'm walking down the hall with like 10,000 photographers taking my picture, cameramen tripping over themselves"--he chuckled a little--"and I'm saying, 'For what?'"

In Mr. King's view, he was merely investigating the same threat that the administration has already acknowledged: that Al Qaeda is attempting to recruit in the Muslim American community.

"I'm confident that the solid majority of people are with me on this, just anecdotally" he said, but also cited a poll that said 52 percent favored the hearings and only 38 were against them.

And the negative coverage had done little to sour his mood.

"What are you going to do?" said Mr. King. He deadpanned: "There's no doubt the world still loves me."

SOME OF HIS FELLOW Republicans have tried to steer clear of the controversy.

House Speaker John Boehner replied with a terse statement to reporters' inquiries: "Chairman King is chairman of the Homeland Security Committee."

Staten Island Congressman Michael Grimm, whose district has a relatively large Muslim American community, took the opposite approach, issuing a 185-word statement that cited the need for cooperation in all communities, without exactly endorsing or denouncing the hearing itself.

"Honestly I got no push-back at all. None whatsoever. [Majority Leader Eric] Cantor was obviously very supportive. Anyone I bumped into was all for it," Mr. King said. "As a political story--not as an important matter, but as a political story--Boehner could see this is a three-, four-, five-day media frenzy, which-after a set of stories today-it's not going to be mentioned again."

The weeks of bad press do not seem to have diminished Mr. King's place as the influential dean of the New York delegation.

After the hearing, when he went to the House floor for a vote, the six freshmen in the New York delegation asked him to mediate a dispute about who should get the powerful Ways and Means Committee seat recently vacated by Chris Lee.

"They wanted me to make a decision, and I'm trying to get my head clear on this," Mr. King said. (He is backing Tom Reed, who was the first to ask for his support.)

Out-of-office Republicans were especially supportive.

On Thursd
ay night, after the votes, Mr. King and his wife, who had come to Washington for the hearing, joined some friends for a nice dinner at the Monocle steakhouse, and then went to the Fox studio to tape an appearance on Sean Hannity's show, where he ran into the Republican message guru Karl Rove.

"I was in the green room talking to Greta Van Susteren and I was about to leave the studio, and Karl Rove came in and started harassing me for causing pandemonium throughout the world," Mr. King said.

"He said, 'Ah, what are you doing? You're disrupting the whole universe!'"

Mr. Rove told Mr. King's wife not to believe her husband when he says the criticism doesn't bother him.

"I was surprised I was getting that kind of sympathy from Karl Rove," Mr. King said.

Rudy Giuliani had called twice in the days leading up to the hearing.

"He called me Tuesday night to wish me luck. And then called me on Wednesday offering to do television, radio, op-eds, whatever I want," said Mr. King, who had awoken at 5:15 on Wednesday morning to do Good Morning America, CBS's Early Show, The Today Show and CNN's American Morning.

"It's great being on television, but after a while you end up saying the same thing," he said. "I figured having another face and, from my perspective, having a very respected face on this issue, it would mean more."

For Democrats, meanwhile, the hearing was a chance to lace the Republican Party for its racial insensitivity, and to attack Mr. King for sending the wrong message to the Muslim world.

"The media and my opponents can't have it both ways. They can't blow this out of all proportion, they can't make all the attacks they're making, they can't say it's the end of the world and then blame me if people react the wrong way to the hearing," Mr. King said. "What they'd be reacting to is not--there's nothing yesterday that I said or the Republicans said or the witnesses said that should be offensive to anyone. If Al Qaeda wants to be offended, fine. If there is any negative consequence, it's from the hysteria before the hearing and the way the Democrats conducted themselves."

On a personal level, he tried not to let the hearing affect his friendships across the aisle. After the hearing, he sought out Mr. Ellison on the House floor for a cordial conversation, and chatted with another longtime friend, Harlem Democrat Charlie Rangel.

"I was sitting with Rangel and Ellison and thought, if somebody takes
a picture now, they'll wonder what happened," he said.

But a certain level of awkwardness persists.

Just after noon on Friday, he hustled out of his office toward the House floor for a vote. A few paces ahead of him was Georgia Congressman John Lewis, one of the champions of the civil rights movement, who ducked into an elevator, leaving Mr. King to wait for the next one.

"He just signed a letter against me," said Mr. King, who was laboring just a little from a hairline fracture on the side of his foot that had, until recently, forced him into a walking boot.

"The worst thing about this was, people saw me and they said, 'Oh, what happened?' And I said, 'I'm walking along the side of the house ...'" he said. "What a stupid story to tell. They're all expecting that I jumped on a terrorist escaping or something."

At the crosswalk leading to the Capitol, Mr. King stood a few feet behind Mr. Lewis, who was standing alone, but the two eventually met at the elevator leading to the House floor.

"How you doing, John?" Mr. King said with his usual jocularity.

"O.K., how you doing?" Mr. Lewis replied.

As they crammed into the elevator next to Texas Republican Kevin Brady, Mr. King joked about arriving late for the votes.

"I figure if I tell them I'm with John Lewis, it'll be O.K.," he said. "And if I get away from Kevin Brady, I'll be a lot better."

"You should be so lucky," Mr. Brady said as they walked onto the House floor.

                        rpillifant@observer.com