This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 11, 2010 - Retired sportscaster Keith Jackson did for college football what the legendary Jack Buck did for Cardinals baseball. The appeal of his signature narration was so contagious that he evolved from being a mere commentator on the event to become a critical component of the spectacle.
But Jackson had a challenge that his colleague didn't face -- he had to sell the telecast to his audience. When Buck broadcast a Cardinals' game, he knew that his listeners were loyal fans who were invested in the fortunes of their team.
Jackson, on the other hand, was bringing a contest between two universities to a national audience, most of whom had no particular allegiance to either school. He had to persuade the viewer that the game was worth watching. He did this by offering a shrewd blend of gridiron analysis interspersed with folksy idioms.
"Whoa, doctor," he might begin, "we've got a barn-burner on our hands today." He'd then outline key matchups and explain the implications of the game for each team's standings, while at some point admonishing Katie to bar the door. By the time he concluded his preamble, you just knew that your life would be significantly diminished if you missed the big USC - Michigan game, even though you still didn't care which team won.
It would seem that the time is ripe to conscript Mr. Jackson from the golf course and dispatch him to the broadcast booth at C-SPAN because we've got a barn-burner a-brewin' on Capitol Hill.
The recently concluded off-year elections yielded a contradictory outcome in that a decidedly centrist electorate voted in a radically polarized House of Representatives. Moderate Democrats -- the so-called "Blue Dogs" -- paid the price for public dissatisfaction with the agenda of their leftist colleagues.
The Blue Dogs hailed from swing districts with mainstream constituencies. They fell like fruit flies as voters rejected the program of their "Yellow Dog" counterparts to the left.
The Yellow Dogs came primarily from liberal enclaves and were safely retained. Thus did Ike Skelton lose his Missouri seat while Nancy Pelosi -- whose tenure as speaker left her with national approval ratings that make Dick Cheney look like Elvis -- easily won re-election in her San Francisco district.
While the surviving Democratic delegation moved to the ideological left, the Republicans, ever mindful of the Tea Party furor they helped to stoke, took a giant step to the right.
Now that it's time to govern, campaign trail platitudes about reduced taxes and balanced budgets are about to confront harsh reality because, for the government to survive, somebody's going to have to raise the nation's debt ceiling. And that somebody is Congress, one chamber of which is soon to be controlled by people who won office by promising fiscal restraint to crowds of adoring fans wearing tri-cornered hats and waving "Don't Tread on Me" banners.
The debt ceiling is the legal maximum on allowable public debt. It presently stands at $14.2 trillion -- a staggering sum that will be exceeded in the first quarter of next year. If the ceiling isn't raised, the government will default on the national debt, throwing global financial markets into chaos and effectively putting itself out of business. If you think the economy's bad now, wait till you see this action.
Of course, the simplistic solution is to require the government to live within its means. That sounds good, but it's easier said than done. 91.7 percent of the revenue the government takes in is devoted to mandatory spending. To see how living within your means would work out, try running your household on 8.3 percent of your net income.
Mandatory spending is the money the government is obliged to pay to others. The biggest piece of this pie is Social Security, which comprises nearly one-fifth of government expenses. Ironically, were we to disband the program, the deficit situation would actually worsen.
In Fiscal 2010, the government paid out $677.95 billion in benefits to Social Security recipients. But it collected about $940 billion in payroll taxes, so that fund is still generating a surplus.
If the government is going to continue to meet its obligations, the only way it can save money is to curtail operations. We could, for instance, trim $29 billion from the budget by disbanding the Marine Corps. That drastic measure would leave us only $1.142 trillion short of a balanced budget. In fact, if we were to delight our enemies by doing away with the Army, Navy and Air Force as well, we'd still be $592 billion in the hole.
The simple fact is that government is presently operating almost exclusively on borrowed money (the deficit) and the only way it can continue to operate is to continue to borrow. The situation is unsustainable in the long term and unavoidable at the moment.
The Democratic majority in the lame-duck Congress could avert the looming crisis by raising the ceiling before they adjourn. That would spare their successors the political embarrassment of reneging on pledges they made while drinking at tea parties.
I wouldn't wager heavily on that outcome. The Dems have their adversaries over a barrel on this one. Either they flip-flop on debt reduction or D.C. ceases to function. The last time a Republican revolution shut down the government, Newt Gingrich got Bill Clinton re-elected.
Early next year, Capitol Hill will host a bout between the loony left and the rigid right as mutually exclusive ideologies confront implacable economics. Personally, I'm betting the economics will ultimately carry the day, but it should be quite a show. Whoa, doctor...
M.W.Guzy is a retired St. Louis cop who currently works for the city Sheriff's Department. His column appears weekly in the Beacon.