We may be heading for a crash, but I think the airplane analogy is off base. Our crash won’t represent “The End”, as it would on a plane, but a market crash, which can transform into a new beginning, and a great opportunity. I’d also quibble with Wretchard’s point #2 on the importance of whether or not the passengers have confidence in their pilot. That wouldn’t matter much on a plane, as the competence of the pilot exists independent of his passenger’s confidence or lack thereof.

But the same can’t be said about a democratic republic such as our own. I suggest that the pending possibility of an Obama victory in 2008 turned a garden variety recession into the financial and political debacle we’re witnessing today. Those who saw clearly what was coming pulled in our resources, stopped spending, and began battening down our hatches. So in part, the financial meltdown is both an irrational response akin to panic selling, and is therefore largely self-fulfilling, and rational response to avoid being trampled to death as everybody heads for the exits.

The Obama debacle is the most tremendous opportunity for fiscal responsibility to re-exert itself after generations of profligate insanity centered in Washington.

The question is: when will someone emerge who can weave the strands together and craft the movement that will sweep the filth from the stables?