We're willing to put up with quite a bit when it comes to the shenanigans our elected officials get up to out in Washington, D.C.
But when we learned that a young couple's long-planned wedding might have to be postponed because of the federal government shutdown and the closing of the George Rogers Clark National Historical Park, it was too much.
What can be wrong with these otherwise intelligent men and women serving in the Congress of the United States that they would be so inconsiderate as to cause the delay of a wedding from taking place at the memorial?
As we write they're still bickering, Republicans and Democrats, over a temporary-spending bill to keep the government functioning for a few more weeks while another agreement is worked out over raising the debt limit.
Meanwhile, outside of Washington, the rest of us watch in disbelief, dumbstruck that our federal government proves to be absolutely dysfunctional.
We think Republicans are making a terrible mistake in demanding that Congress "defund" the Affordable Care Act.
What they really should have done was stay out of the way of the new health-care law's taking affect: in 18 months the law will either have failed to such an extent that it's repeal will be absolutely necessary, in which case Republicans will easily add to their majority in the House in 2016 and take control of the Senate and the White House as well.
Or, should after 18 months it become clear that the law is accomplishing exactly what the Obama administration said it would accomplish ... well, then Republicans could share in at least some of the credit for helping approximately 32 million previously-uninsured Americans get health insurance.
Either way, Republicans would stand to gain.
But it's too late for them now, and it's not clear what the GOP's fate will be with the outcome of the current squabbling.
Nor, for that matter, is it in any way certain what awaits Democrats once some kind of bill is approved. Will Rogers once quipped that he wasn't a member of an organized party, he was a Democrat; he would feel just as comfortable about his affiliation today.
Neither party is scoring well with the public — and really hasn't for some time — and with the shutdown they're not likely to see any improvement in their dismal approval ratings.
That's not to say there aren't partisans who wholeheartedly support the stand their respective representatives are taking during this protracted nonsense. After all, somebody votes them into office.
Stubbornness as a political philosophy seems to us to be at the very least a shortsighted approach to governing; at the worst, it's suicidal.
There have been other periods in our history when politics drove the federal government into paralysis, when a proclivity to excessive partisanship divided the nation along sectional lines and nearly led to its dissolution.
In his splendid autobiography, Henry Adams recounted the comments of a frustrated 19th century cabinet secretary: "You can’t use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!"
To which we say: Whatever it takes.