Never in my life have I written anything that made so little impression on the reading public as my last TRB column ("Trigger Happy"), wherein I explained that it doesn't matter that the super committee won't meet its eve-of-Thanksgiving deadline to find $1.2 trillion in budget cuts and/or tax increases. (I include in that calculus the three years I spent writing for and eventually editing Highlights, my high school newspaper, 1973-1976.) Indeed, I wrote in my column, blowing the deadline would likely be best for all concerned. Let me repeat that. Forget about the super committee deadline. Get on with your life and worry about the Euro instead.
I'm not going to repeat all the arguments why it doesn't matter, because I'm not that kind of blogger.
Why so little impact? (Except, of course, on the column's 11 online commenters, who have my undying gratitude.) Why has no one even bothered to argue that I'm wrong? I can only assume that the narrative of high drama surrounding the super committee is one that nobody except actual living, breathing budget experts (a couple of whom I interviewed before writing) can possibly resist. It's just too much fun to fear the sequestration boogeyman. I actually heard one of the experts I talked to quoted on NPR saying there was no way the committee would meet its deadline. They cut him off before he went on to say (I assume, since he said it to me) that it doesn't matter. And I thought NPR was supposed to be left wing!
Look, it isn't often that a looming national problem can be ignored with such impunity. Take advantage of this opportunity, because I don't know when the next one will come along.
Update: Okay, Robert Borosage said something in the same general zone today in Salon:
http://news.salon.com/2011/11/07/defeat_the_super_committee/singleton/
But why did it take almost two weeks?