David Brooks nails it. Newt Gingrich tries to add visibility to it with his American Solutions initiative, but current national leadership does nothing about the fiscal crisis facing this country. How long will we pretend that the train is still on the rails when the federal government spends without restraint on entitlements (even the word for this loaded with expectations that all this spending is necessary and right)?
"In the different reality, everybody plays by Mardi Gras rules. The norms are different, masks are worn and certain unpleasant facts fall away. Presidential candidates vow to offset the cost of health care plans through “cost savings” measures, and everybody pretends those savings are actually real. Republicans promise tax cuts and people pretend those pledges are not absurd. Democrats vow to pay for their grand spending plans by raising taxes on the rich, even though each one percent increase in the top tax rate only produces $6 billion in revenue. The Mardi Gras norms are built on a fiction — that the current budgetary path is sustainable — and once you enter that fiction, then all sorts of other fictions become necessary and trickery piles upon trickery until all the standards of behavior are turned upside down."
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