This week in the saga

The government closes at midnight on Tuesday and he spends Wednesday on a city instead — a governor living in a dream world, a place run like a third world country, and no choice about going in. That night the closure stops being a defeat and becomes an opportunity: use it to clear out dead wood, waste and fraud, and billions can be saved. Thursday he meets the man who wrote the plan to work out which agencies to cut and whether the cuts should be temporary or permanent, and says he cannot believe they gave him this. Friday evening, in one paragraph addressed to every officer in the country, flag burning becomes a year in prison and immediate arrest. Saturday the other war moves: the withdrawal line is agreed, the ceasefire will be immediate on confirmation, and the exchange begins. And on Monday evening he writes about the shutdown as something done to the country by other people, in the middle of the greatest economy it has ever had, and asks them to open the government tonight.