I first became a Wall Street correspondent 34 years ago, after Black Monday, Oct. 19, 1987. An element in that day’s panic was an undertow of concern about ballooning public spending. A debt clock loomed over Times Square, alarming passersby, its flickering red line of figures looking like what it was, a danger signal. I recall people’s eyes standing on stalks at the “telephone number” string of digits showing what we collectively owed. Public debt back then had reached $3 trillion.

Today, it’s $28 trillion, seven times as much. Yet although our fiscal condition is measurably much worse than it was a generation ago, debt barely registers on most politicians’ radars. They spend like proverbially intoxicated mariners. The Democratic Party does everything it can to increase borrowing and spending, working under the spell of a delusional but fashionable idea called Modern Monetary Theory, which posits that we can spend as much as we want without adverse consequences. Donald Trump won the presidency promising not to touch those misnamed “entitlements” that were in dire need of reform long before President George W. Bush’s efforts to do so went down in flames in 2005. The parties look the other way and pretend they don’t see the impending wreck, but that doesn’t mean it’ll come any later. Indeed, it ensures it will come sooner.