Like an insistent teenage driver, determined to see how fast he can take that blind curve on a rainy road at night, the GOP seems unwilling to abandon its particular brand of brinkmanship until it winds up in the emergency room. If that’s the case, mightn’t it be better to let the crash happen, if only so the reconstruction can start?

In a Washington in which serial crisis over basic business has become the new norm — and the Republicans’ default negotiating posture has all the bluster of the Cowardly Lion’s “Put ’em uuup! Put ’em uuup!” — perhaps the thing to do is accept the worst. If the latest go-round is simply another ritualized prelude to a temporary solution, another melodramatic installment of “As the World Turns,” then what’s the point? Won’t the same cast be back next month, or next year, battling the same problem?