Like many my family and I watched on Sunday as the House of Representatives moved inexorably to the moment when votes would be cast and tallied. It was an afternoon and evening of theatre. Outside deep emotion raged with all the sincerity and clumsiness characteristic of deep emotion. Some of it seeped inside and at moments a body whose proceedings usually serve as sleep medication came to life with shouts and grumbling and outbursts. I felt like I was in a democracy where we clash vibrantly but agree that in the end we will simply vote. For a little while there was living, breathing, raucous, rambunctious democracy. It was, dare I say, exciting.

To be sure there were substantial periods of boredom as speaker after speaker rose to rail or to plead common threads into a blanket perfect for snoozing. If I had been Speaker of the House, I think I would have denied at least one request to revise and extend remarks just to make sure everyone was awake. On it droned. Representative Boehner of Ohio, the minority leader, spoke last on behalf of the opposition and he was resplendent in a tan that couldn’t possibly be from Ohio. He crescendoed admirably although his hand gestures seemed irritatingly out of sync with his words. There was no effort to persuade. It was pure rant and a clear sign that the oppostion had given up. I began to feel more optimistic about what pundits had been saying all afternoon: it was a done deal.

There was a mob outside to which frequent reference was made. It had as its focus defeat of the bill aimed at medical insurance reform. The best in it feared grey walls of government enclosing the flower garden of free and independent enterprise. It is a mythical fear but a high-minded one. The mass lugged much stranger myths, fears, hates, disappointments, longings, and illusions that had forged an anger so vivid that you wanted to run up and kiss and comfort it. The mob’s contradictions, its behavior, its ignorance all blossomed into easy targets for disgust, derision and comedy. But those who took shots largely missed the bull’s-eye. Of course it was clumsy, stupid, misbehaved and crass: it was a mob. That’s how mobs are. That those who put our government together knew and recognized the dangers of mobs is, in part, why we have a Senate. The founders felt a need to check the excesses to which the unwashed, the untutored and – as the founders were careful to note – the unpropertied are prone. There is, some say, a thin line between mobocracy and ordered democracy, a line perpetually at risk.

The “tea party” display of public passion stood in sharp contrast to more focused and purposeful public demonstrations we have witnessed. The quiet, determined marches and gatherings of the civil rights struggle had about them an air of calm conviction that may be reserved for moments when the public is for something rather than against it. When you ask participants in the “tea party” movement what they are for you get a litany of vague and often peculiar statements none of which seem to be something you could reduce to a piece of legislation. It is a movement united more by name than goal. For the moment the goal was to defeat legislation long overdue and badly needed. But with that goal for all practical purposes gone, the mob will need a new one.

Like any mob it is susceptible to stoking and the crew of Republican representatives who appeared on the Capitol balcony waving hands and flags to stoke it may end up with the tricky task of defining that new goal. We can only hope they exercise some wisdom in doing so. But it is not encouraging to such a hope that those representatives themselves seem willing to pass up any reasonable compromise in favor of political victory. It is, after all, simply remarkable that not one Republican voted in favor of the bill. Has the Republican Party become as uniform in its composition as the “tea party” mob: white and mostly male.

It was exciting and although we were told by pundits mid-afternoon that with agreement reached between the White House and anti-abortion Democrats passage was assured, we remained glued to the television to see for ourselves that 216^th vote cast. It seemed to take forever. When it came at last, we enjoyed a collective sigh of relief.