Boy, this is weird. The current political/economic dilemma is operating with the exact same set of metaphors as my triathlon training program. With a little “Through the Looking Glass” thrown in. Wow; with one little essay, I can check off almost all of the categories I’ve created for my blog.
My coaches are natural teachers; they love to create little stories and metaphors to illustrate the points they are trying to make, rather than try and teach us via detailed technical explanations. One of the things we are trying to do, naturally, is improve our biking so we can cover 112 miles in the middle of the Ironman in a shorter time, and still be fresh enough to not slow down when running a marathon.
They’ve learned that building up one’s cycling capabilities at hard, short bursts of effort (2-20 minutes) lays the foundation for being able to cycle for hours at a steady rate. It’s a little counter-intuitive. We train at effort levels far in excess of what we can do on race day, for far shorter times. Much of our training is at the pace we could hold for an hour before collapsing. Technically, this is called the “Functional Threshold Pace”, or FTP.
Another key element of our training is at the effort level we can hold for, say, 5 minutes before collapsing. Again, this has a technical name, “VO2 Max”. Without a detailed explanation of what these terms mean, they are just gibberish. But instead of actually going into the physiological detail and training research, out coaches just call the VO2 Max the “Roof”, and the FTP the “Ceiling.”
Meaning, we are building a house. That house is our fitness, and the bigger the house (the more space within it), the better our fitness, and the faster we’ll be able to go on race day. The mainstay of our training is to make the ceilings in the house as high as possible, so we have a lot of room to play in come race day. But the ceiling can only go so high before it butts into the roof, so we have to raise that as well.
It’s actually a pretty inexact metaphor; something closer to reality wold probably be talking about piston, cylinders and tie rods in a car engine, but that is more technical, less universal than the ceiling/roof analogy. So we make do.
Now, sometimes when I think about this, I go beyond the coaches, and start thinking about Alice in Wonderland, who kept shrinking and growing, sometimes finding herself in a house with the ceilings far too high, and other times banging her head up in the rafters. I don’t quite know how that fits into the training metaphor, but I know exactly where it fits in the “Debt Ceiling” metaphor.
See, the Debt Ceiling is a totally artificial construct. The US Constitution clearly states that the debt obligations of the United States shall not be questioned. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment has this nifty little sentence: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” (This was written right after the Civil War, hence the reference to insurrection and rebellion suppression.)
Congress has the power of the purse: Article 1, Section 7, 1: All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives. And so on until the bill is passed and then signed by the President. Any money spent (or debt incurred) by the US is approved in advance by Congress. The job of the Executive (the President) is to make sure that money is spent as intended. So what’s the debt ceiling? Where did it come from?
Well, in 1917, when the US entered WW I, it authorized the issuance of bonds to help pay for the war. Congress wanted to make sure things didn’t get out of control, so it put a ceiling on the value of the bonds. Ever since, as the US has borrowed money from time to time, there has been a continuing need to raise that ceiling, or stop issuing the debt. Usually, that’s done with a minimum hand wringing about living beyond our means and shoving an untenable burden onto our grandchildren.
But this time, the political parties have decided to draw lines in the sand, and simultaneously (a) refuse to cross the lines their own lines and (b) dare the other guy to cross. They’re playing chicken with national bankruptcy. But when the entire country goes bankrupt, there is no Chapter 7 or 11. There is no supervised restructuring. And, like most other countries which teeter towards default, there is no one else who can provide emergency funds or help us re-structure our debt. We’re on our own.
Leaders of both parties express mystification at the impasse. It seems as if one night they got together, dug a hole together, and both jumped in. And neither is willing to provide the shoulder for the other climb out, for fear that he’ll run away, rather than pulling the other guy up with him.
Anyway, back to the metaphor: what we need, clearly, is a bigger house. The way we do that in cycling is to do a cram session of several weeks of very hard, very short efforts, which provides a turbo charge to our whole cycling capacity. In short, a short, intense stimulus. We just can’t agree on how to do that.
While I’ve got lots of advice, I’m going to keep it to myself, as these guys have to find their own way out. It’s their job. I’ve done a fair amount of high stakes negotiating back in the 80s and 90s, and I can see the various leaders, from Obama on down, following the standard “I’ll call your bluff” playbook. Problem is, the Republicans don’t really know if they themselves are bluffing or not, so they can’t respond.
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Whereas in the Tour de France, things are becoming a lot more clear. Alberto Contador apparently burned one too many matches in winning the Giro d’Italia six weeks ago and will not win his 4th Tour. Ivan Basso, last year’s Giro winner, skipped Italy this year, and is heading for third place in Paris. Cadel Evans is just fast enough in the time trial to finish on the top step. Schleck will be 2nd; whether that’s Frank or Andy, though, I’m not sure. At least based on today’s efforts, Frank is the strongest climber in the Tour; too bad he’s such a weak sister against the clock. Andy’s a bit stronger there, but seems to have lost his punch just like Contador; makes one wonder about the source of their previous prowess.