I've complained in the past about Sen. Richard Shelby's willful veto of Peter Diamond's nomination as a Fed governor, and about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's intentional stalling of nominees across the board, as a passive-aggressive way to hamstring the administration.
Both of them now give way to Rep. Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who in walking out of the talks to avoid a default on U.S. debt gives as clear an example of petty-ambition-over-national-interest as we've seen in public life in quite a while.
