They were shutdown people, always silent.
This is the hardest and coldest reality, and this is also what always ends these silly shutdowns.
No shutdown ever happened.
But the impact of shutdowns is not always dire.
Given that it is Republicans that will always get blamed for government shutdowns (voters have figured out that they are the anti-government party), Obama can play hardball again.
To me, the shutdown of 1995 will always be about Monica Lewinsky.
As for the comic opera that brought the government to the edge of a shutdown last week, there is always the reassuring thought that America's governing arrangements are dysfunctional by design.
Mr Obama has negotiated with Republicans over the debt limit and the US budget in the past, but those negotiations have always been resolved before a government shutdown.
A disciplined majority in one house could always use the threat of a shutdown or default to gut any law it didn't like.
After all, we can't expect the government to run efficiently when the possibility of a shutdown is pretty much always around the corner.
