To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders

The real story of the debt-ceiling showdown is not that democracy is pathological. It is, rather, that the electoral system -- even when plagued by partisanship -- is the best ever devised to defang angry citizens and the political movements they form. Once again, U.S. democracy has demonstrated that it is a machine for generating moderation and preserving the ideological center.
You may be forgiven for thinking this sounds as crazy as, well, a Tea Partier in a sweltering D.C. summer. After all, the new congressmen elected as a result of the Tea Party insurgency within the Republican Party brought the country -- and by extension, the world -- scarily close to some sort of financial meltdown.

Democrats and traditional Republicans in Congress understood that maintaining the credit of the U.S. was serious business. By contrast, until the very last moment, it seemed possible that the Tea Party representatives just didn’t understand the basics of financial economics. Their idea of ending business as usual was starting to look like ending the financial world as we know it.

The upshot was that the final deal, excoriated by hard-line Republicans and Democrats alike as a tremendous concession to the other side, is somewhere toward the median of American public opinion. It may be incoherent. But in the most literal sense it is undoubtedly centrist.

Behold the genius of democracy. Insurgent political forces can be brought into the tent -- and domesticated. Whatever the Tea Party congressmen might say to the television cameras, the fact is that today they are just another bunch of politicians. It’s something we should be grateful for. And it’s a lesson any Chinese Communist Party official would do well to understand.