One of the old clichés in Beltway reporting is that there’s some inherent good in “getting things done.” Centrist politicians have long adored the phrase too, largely because it’s so devoid of actual content. To centrist liberals, it has the added bonus of being a handy cudgel with which to bludgeon a Left they insist is too puritanical to muddy itself in the grown-up business of gutting social programs or genuflecting to Wall Street. Infantile progressivism cleaves to impractical ideas like people not being homeless or dying because they can’t afford to see a doctor; adult politics “gets things done.”

So it was probably inevitable that the Joe Biden/Kevin McCarthy deal to raise America’s debt ceiling would radiate some of the familiar rhetoric. Characteristic is Politico’s write-up, which reports the circumstances surrounding the agreement with a dollop of dramatic flair, breathlessly revealing the extensive maneuvers in political management that finally handed “a major victory [to] Biden,” the consummate dealmaker. With assists from elsewhere in the media, the White House is unsurprisingly spinning it this way too.

As ever, the whole thing falls apart the moment you look at what’s actually in the deal or consider what the alternatives to the periodic debt ceiling brokerage there might have been. The Democrats could have raised the debt ceiling at any time during their recent control of Congress and avoided this affair entirely. The debt ceiling being an unusual institution to begin with, they could also have eliminated it altogether (an option Biden casually dismissed last October, deeming it “irresponsible”).