Reading tea leaves is a tricky business under the best of circumstances, especially so when partisan invective obscures the prospects of reasoned compromise. Both sides staked out hard positions in the political run-up to the government shutdown, with the Democrats taking the prize for incendiary rhetoric. Nothing from any of the major players on the Republican side even remotely approached the fusillade of scorn, insults and character assassination from Democratic leaders.

President Obama could have restored a modicum of civil discourse, but then Dan Pfieffer, one of his senior White House aides, compared House Speaker John Boehner and other congressional Republicans to terrorists and suicide bombers. Obama should have fired Pfieffer, but instead effectively endorsed his aide’s nonsensical metaphor. Similarly destructive language has been repeatedly heard from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California. Mothers used to wash their children’s mouths with soap for uttering less offensive words than those heard from these Democrats in recent days.