Crises are built here like an assembly line, says our Washington columnist.

Conventional wisdom says this city makes nothing, that we are just a place of words and bureaucracy.

Conventional wisdom is not quite right.

Washington manufactures crises—big-time crises, completely unnecessary crises, costly crises, the kind that drain money and opportunity from current and future generations while resident politicians complain that we now have a debt crisis stemming from our previous crises.

What happened here in the last few weeks is sadly representative. Nationwide, fifteen American cities had been devastated by fire and water. People lost lives and property in sweeping Texas wildfires and the flood waters spawned by Hurricane Irene. Folks hurt by those disasters turned to Washington for help. Washington gave them a crisis.

Tea Party members and Republicans told the suffering masses they could have help only if they were willing to further weaken the nation’s technological muscle and, perhaps, the future of their children by scrapping already pitifully underfunded programs for electric vehicles and the development of other alternative propulsion systems.

Democrats, who have long worked with Republicans in the manufacture of a future national energy crisis by doing nothing to develop a real national energy policy, opposed the Tea Party-Republican demands to cut federal funding for electric cars to help pay for emergency relief funding.

At the apex of this fake impasse sat the threat of another government shutdown if neither side could agree to yet another temporary budget measure to keep the federal government, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), going for another week.

FEMA, meanwhile, was crying wolf—saying that if it did not quickly receive a couple of billion dollars from Congress, it would no longer be able to help the needy.

The stage was set for another Washington crisis until many of you out there, apparently, started raising hell. Good thing you did.

FEMA suddenly discovered that it had more money than it thought, about $2.5 billion at last reporting, enough to continue helping victims of the Texas wildfires and Hurricane Irene. Tea Party members who were willing to let their constituents eat ashes and bail water without a promise of transportation technology budget cuts in return for more FEMA funding quietly dropped their harsh demands. Democrats beat their political chests declaring victory, while declaring nothing to increase federal funding for mass transportation needs, fossil fuel conservation, or the needed development of electric vehicles and other alternative transportation systems.

Do not breathe a sigh of relief over the latest aversion of a government shutdown.

Another Washington crisis is aborning, this one in November, when yet another argument over the tortured federal budget comes to a head. Again, expect Tea Party members and Republicans to demand slashing everything—except Department of Defense spending and tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

Expect Democrats to oppose trimming anything having to do with Social Security, including payments still going to nursing homes for patients long ago buried; or Medicare payments to healthcare providers who charge $2 for a single aspirin pill. Expect neither Tea Party members, nor Republicans, nor Democrats to do anything requiring American consumers to pay the true, higher cost of gasoline.

Expect a crisis.

It is what we get when we choose to elect politicians instead of leaders. Here’s the difference: Politicians thrive on crises. Properly exploited, a crisis helps them get reelected. Leaders sensibly try to avoid crises; or they take bold, often controversial steps to end a crisis when one occurs, deliberately acting in behalf of the greater good, even if doing so ends their political careers.

It’s too bad. Washington is a city of politicians.