Historical Context Missing From Debt Ceiling Reporting

Chris Weigant
Political Writer and Blogger at ChrisWeigant.com
Posted: 7/14/11 11:55 AM ET

I've always been astounded at the near-complete lack of historical memory regularly exhibited by both Washington politicians and the "journalists" who purport to cover them. Nothing I've seen in the past few weeks has caused me to change this opinion, either, as the fight over raising the federal debt ceiling has played itself out.

While it's certainly understandable that subjects such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff or the Greenback Party would be considered so obscure and so removed from living memory as to be ignored, there is simply no excuse for ignoring a direct parallel to today's political news, which happened only two presidents ago. Because we've been here before with the debt ceiling. Well, not precisely where we find ourselves at in 2011, but close enough to the government shutdown in 1995-96 that multiple parallels can easily be drawn.