A great old war movie cliche: protagonist, gesturing toward the front line, says something like, "it's quiet tonight. Way too quiet." The silence means an impending enemy attack. The end of the 2023 debt ceiling crisis seemed a lot like that. Normal. Waaaay too normal. The President and party leaders of both Houses decided, after a lot of meetings by their senior staff, that a certain package was going to become law. Everybody who was in on the deal marshaled the amount of votes they had to marshal -- more than enough, in fact. The deal was done. It seemed just like the old days before Trump, before pandemic era craziness about how the vaccines are about to turn us all into zombies, before a riot in which the rioters threatened to lynch the Vice President of the United States, before a 15-rounds contest for Speaker of the House ... just like what would once have been considered normal politics. No trillion-dollar platinum coin. No invocation of the 14th amendment. Not...