Fail-Safe

In his remarks on fiscal policy today, the president said: "But just to hold Washington -- and to hold me --- accountable and make sure that the debt burden continues to decline, my plan includes a debt failsafe."

The ending of that sentence was unfortunate. The term "fail-safe" became famous because of a 1964 movie of the same name. The title was deliberately ironic: it was all about the failure of a "fail-safe" system to prevent accidental nuclear attack. At the movie's close, nuclear bombs destroy Moscow and New York.