Especially in emergencies, grave crises like a nuclear threat or a terrorist attack, you need calm people who don’t think the world is going to end. Lincoln wasn’t cliffy. As the new Steven Spielberg movie shows, Lincoln had a goal and pursued it methodically through various means, some shady. He wasn’t interested in hysteria. It had no political use for him.

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Language is important, he (Derek Thompson, business editor at The Atlantic,) said, because it can provoke a panicky deal rather than a smart deal. He suggested that a more apt metaphor might be dieting after bingeing, as in “fiscal fast.”

“There will be a short, sharp recession in early to middle of next year, which is more like falling on your face after fasting too vigorously, and then the economy is going to grow,” he said.

The really bad news is that, even if we survive this abyss, there are more coming, with the debt ceiling cliff and the spending bill cliff dead ahead. Once you start with the cliffs, you can fall into cliffinity — with endless cliff riffs on the horizon.