Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time, there were two major parties in the US government. The government had a crisis to address, and the leaders of those two parties had different ideas of how to address it. The House of Representatives was controlled by one party, while the President belonged to the other.

Because the two parties had different ideas, they were not able to agree, and therefore not able to accomplish anything to address the crisis at hand. And so the House session ended. "[One party] seemed eager to use the [other party's] leadership's effort to let lawmakers leave town to characterize [the other party] as indifferent", one newspaper stated. And so that party did; its members stayed in the House chamber and continued to give speeches, with the cameras off, demanding that the majority party do right by the American people.

The White House Chief of Staff chastised the majority party for its antics. "This is not a time to leave...this is not a time to cut out of this town when we are trying to resolve a very real crisis in
this country. There are a lot of people being impacted..." the Chief of Staff remarked.

Eventually, of course, the crisis was solved. The American people, however, had a long memory, and remembered the majority party's part in needlessly prolonging a crisis that could have, and should have, been averted much more quickly.

The year...was 1995. The current majority party apparently hopes you don't remember.

(Hat tip: Tulsa World and its free archives...maybe the increasingly expensive Statesman could learn from them)