No I don't know why we've spent 2 years talking about the deficit. I'm sure if we'd spent 2 years talking about jobs then the Republicans would still be behaving much as they have been, but at least the public conversation would be about an actual problem. Deficits are not a problem in and of themselves. They are a symptom of a bad economy, and potentially a cause of other problems, but they are not actually a problem. And at the moment they aren't the cause of any other problems, except stupidity.
Fix the economy, fix the deficit. Just give everybody some free money. It isn't always the case that free ice cream is the actual solution to serious problems, but it is! Politicians are handed any opportunity to do an incredibly popular thing - free money! - and yet we're talking about making people suffer so that David Brooks can get excitied.
