Columnist Jim Slusher: Ceilings, sausages and the pain of watching

Talk about sausage making.

Some ongoing news stories are just miserably painful to follow. I'm not talking about those that involve death or personal hardship. Those at least are usually compelling on some level of human interest and can stir the kinds of feelings that help us all feel connected as people, maybe even understand our society or our world a little better.

But the nation's debt ceiling? This tense but tedious controversy rears its ugly head every couple of years, waits to see who will be demonized for refusing to deal with it and then, when enough political leaders on either side realize it might be them, is pushed forward so future politicians can repeat the process.

There is, surely, something important to be said - and done - about dealing with such a recurring potential catastrophe. Indeed, I'm sure much will be said about it, though I'm not going to hold my breath about anything being done.

For the moment, with the nation and world on tenterhooks waiting to see whether the current agreement will stick in time to rescue the U.S. economy, I'm overcome with the weariness of watching it all. You may be, too.

Applying news judgment is a studied balancing act between what you know people want to read about to add a little brightness to their day and what you think they need to know about to better understand their community, world or government. If it holds a place on either side of the scale, the debt ceiling story almost entirely lists toward "need to know."

Sure, everyone will want to know if economic catastrophe is looming, who is doing anything to stave it off and what might be required. But apart from those elements, covering the story devolves into a mixture of descriptions of what the impending Armageddon will look like and the he-said-she-said outcries over who is to blame for the problem and who will get credit for successfully punting it to a next generation of political negotiators. For most people, I suspect, reading about it all is an equally dreary experience.

But the issue is an undeniable crisis, so we will continue to offer important stories on why it is a crisis, what could happen if it is not solved, who would rather plunge the nation into economic doom than give up a cherished political point and where all the fingers are pointing, so that readers and voters can try to sort out the issues of blame and - although there is precious little of it to be found anywhere - credit.

It's an untidy and cheerless business for all concerned. Presumably, the point of all these "temporary" eclipses of the debt ceiling is to give leaders time to create a stable balance of spending and income. It will, of course, take a modern-day Diogenes to comb the streets of Washington for a man or woman willing to truly embrace that task.

Which leaves us back here, with our fingers crossed that disaster will again be postponed. As news events go, a debt ceiling deal is not a tasty sausage, which offers scant succor for the agony of watching it get made. It is consequential news, so it requires thorough reporting. But won't we all be glad when we can move on to something else?

jslusher@dailyherald.com