John C. Calhoun, that "cast-iron man" of our nation's history during which time political rigidity effected precursors to civil war, seems a fitting reference for sobering thoughtfulness now that "leadership" might dispel the intoxication of ideological fermentations that twist the word that the feisty South Carolinian made famous: nullification.

Another word, compromise, now looms like a grand vision of a golden shaft of sunlight piercing dark clouds and reflecting capitol glow that no gold-leafing rivals.

Yet the business of compromise, recorded as our history's context, better documents ambitions and their political traceries as canniness than it does the disposition of Solon.

Whether among the interested or the disinterested, the people we are remains, but for brief miracles of unifying generalized fear, a people united in disunity and oxymoronic in distinctions between public and private.

Nullification, it appears, might again sweep this land as leaders Calhoun the setting, standing at the same cliff that has consistently been the scenario for our most fractious undoings: domestic tranquility as but the rubble of economic earthquake upon which to construct, yet again, wheelin' 'n' dealin' that might work, might not.