Instapundit Glenn Reynolds on Fast and Slow Disasters for America

In his weekly
USA Today column, Glenn Reynolds, a.k.a. Instapundit, ruminates on
Lightning Fall, a novel that depicts three massive,
simutaneous terrorist attacks on the United States.

While [author Bill] Quick, a San Francisco
tech guy, doesn’t always quite capture the idiom of official
Washington, he’s got a good sense for its actions, as opposed to
its words. “Never let a crisis go to waste” is the motto of our
ruling class, and Quick’s illustrations of how politicians of both
parties respond are, unfortunately, all too plausible in
general.

And even without such overt disasters, Washington continues to
run up debts future generations won’t be able to pay, to pass bills
that no one has read, and to engage in policy experimentation whose
consequences will be borne not by the experimenters, but by the
experimented-upon. The results are likely to be poor.

Which raises a question for voters now: We have so far avoided
the kind of terrorist-inspired disasters that Quick has striking
the West Coast and New Orleans. But what do we do about the
slow-motion disaster that’s ongoing in Washington, D.C., today?