Chait doesn't understand pundit priorities:
What's truly bizarre is this idea that [the debt is] the most urgent issue to address. Climate change seems clearly more urgent--and, what's more, it's probably irreversible. The economic crisis is also more urgent. But Washington elites are fairly removed from the cataclysmic effects of the economic crisis--they're not losing their homes or living in economic terror. And climate change is a "partisan" issue, unworthy of the urgings of a non-partisan wise man. And so, by dint of the peculiar isolation and sociological demands of the members of the political and media establishments, the deficit must become the top priority.
Well, excuuuse me. The Dish has made the debt a top priority since the early Bush administration. The solution to it is a lot more straightforward and reliable than mitigating climate change; the urgency of it matters a great deal depending on what generation you're in; and the economic crisis is surely made no better when investors see the US economy as headed for default, precise timing TBD by the markets.