In the debt ceiling showdown, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-California, ended up making the same bet.

John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com

Each man wagered not only that the center can hold but that it still exists—that there still is a large enough core of Americans who are willing to work through differences to make this country function to make a deal possible.

That’s no sure thing.

Americans are divided in ways they haven’t been for more than a half-century, since the tumultuous, even tortured 1960s. Egged on by leaders who see both profit and paths to power in encouraging division, huge swaths of the nation have become accustomed to thinking nothing but the worst of their fellow citizens.

This problem is exacerbated by decades of sophisticated gerrymandering in the U.S. House of Representatives, which has left the people’s chamber stuffed with extremists from both parties. Because their experiences have prepared them to deal only with people who already agree with them on everything, these extremists wouldn’t know how to close a deal if the instructions were written in big block letters on the lid.

They’re more interested in making statements than getting things done.

That’s why the rabid right-wingers in the House Republican caucus pushed McCarthy, a relentlessly ambitious pragmatist cloaking himself in the garb of an ideologue, through 15 humiliating votes before installing him as speaker—even though the party had no other plausible alternative.

They made a statement, all right—one that weakened the hand they and their leader held for all the wagers ahead.

This disconnection from reality revealed itself in the eye-to-eye staring contest McCarthy entered with Biden over the debt ceiling and curbing budget deficits.

The most extreme elements in McCarthy’s camp—including former President Donald Trump—blithely dismissed the consequences of having the nation default on its debt.

McCarthy, one suspect, knew better.

He likely realized that the impact of a default, with its accompanying delayed or missed Social Security and other payments, would have hit the GOP’s rural constituency with disproportionate harshness. The ardor of even the MAGA crowd for grand gestures likely would have diminished once people began to miss meals and saw property foreclosures as a realistic possibility.

This understanding undercut McCarthy’s bargaining position from the beginning. It’s hard to pull the trigger on the gun with which you’re threatening someone else when it’s pointed at your own head.

That’s why the deal that emerged carried little in the way of conservative victories that couldn’t have been achieved through more traditional—and decidedly less high-stakes—means.

McCarthy touted the bargain as the first time in history that spending would be cut.

But it won’t be.

The deal calls for domestic spending to flatline for two years and military spending to see slight increases. Whatever supposed budget restraint might be imposed likely will be circumvented by using funds earmarked for other purposes—pandemic spending, etc.—to supplement areas and agendas feeling a pinch.

The major concession McCarthy extracted was symbolic, one demanding a work requirement for certain benefits. In practical terms, this affects few people receiving the benefits in question and merely adds a burden for the government workers administering the program.

But it is a gesture—one that resonates with the MAGA base.

For that reason, McCarthy made it a priority.

Because, again, grand gestures often matter more to his constituency than getting things done.

The greatest overall effect of this debt ceiling/budget bargain is that Biden and the Democrats won’t be able to engage in any ambitious social service spending programs for the next two years.

But, so long as Republicans control the House, such sweeping progressive ambitions never were a possibility anyway. Whatever progressives’ dreams might have been or might be, they didn’t have the votes.

And votes are the currency that counts in legislative bodies.

So, we Americans watched our leaders dance the nation along the volcano’s edge for no good reason.

The deal that emerged was like most political deals—imperfect and likely to satisfy almost no one but enough to keep the nation Abraham Lincoln once called “the last best hope of earth” stumbling forward for a little while longer.

Yes, despite our leaders’ best efforts to send us tumbling over the edge, we Americans found a way to stumble forward once again.

That’s politics.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.