Road show

Alan Simpson was a bombastic Republican United States senator from the wild west of Wyoming. Erskine Bowles was the polished son of a prominent North Carolina family who moved calmly through Wall Street's corridors and then into public service as Bill Clinton's chief of staff and president of the University of North Carolina system. President Obama brought these two personalities together to work, with a commission, on solving the nation's debt crisis.

And they did it, exposing some tough choices that appealed to neither Democrats nor Republicans as a package. Democrats didn't like changes to entitlement programs; Republicans wanted to stick to their mantra of cutting budgets without raising taxes. Bowles and Simpson now are on quite the road show, pushing their findings as Congress looks at another increase in the debt ceiling and resumes debate over wrestling with a debt problem that could well make America's economy weak and second-rate.

The show this week came to Duke University, where the two men continued to speak of sober challenges and no alternatives to sacrifice, whether that means changing Social Security and Medicare or raising tax revenue. Bowles and Simpson agree that neither partisan view, whether the Democrats' preference for raising taxes and holding steady on entitlements or the Republicans' belief that if only they continue to cut government's size and scope they can fix the economy for the long haul, is correct.

But action isn't likely this year, Bowles said. Primarily because sacrifice isn't a big talking point on the campaign trail, and also because Washington's pace is ... well, glacial.

While Bowles tried to be optimistic in his assessment of what's possible in the future, both he and Simpson speak truth when they say the current spending and debt patterns will be serious hindrances in years to come. If the country doesn't do something, Simpson said, "We'll be a great country, but we won't be No. 1."

Unsupportable debt will hamper our ability to grow and build on a foundation of our own. It will make American jobs more unstable. And it will simply pass along to the next three or four generations a responsibility for righting the economy that should be addressed now.

Allowing that much debt to linger, in other words, will not solve anything and will, like an illness untreated, only make the existing problems worse. It is not America's history to avoid tough choices, or to hesitate on decisions or to give up on its future. Bowles and Simpson and their commission have offered the blueprint.