THE bail-out bill was heading towards defeat in the House of Representatives, and Democratic and Republican leaders were desperately trying to twist arms and change votes when a bipartisan group of backbenchers began to heckle them.
"Regular order," they cried, demanding that the leaders end the vote and pronounce the bill dead.
In the well of the chamber the Democrat Steny Hoyer, the usually genial House majority leader, turned with fury on one of his tormenters, the Texan Republican Louie Gohmert, and shouted: "The market's tanking as we speak."
So it was. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 778 points, the largest one-day point drop in history.
After the vote of 228 to 205 party leaders did their usual rounds of partisan finger-pointing, but it was not a partisan issue at all.
The centre had collapsed in favour of a coalition of the far-right and far-left. What was once the lunatic fringe was now a majority: 40 per cent of House Democrats, going by Monday's vote, and 60 per cent of Republicans.
"I don't know that we know the path forward at this point," said a broken House minority leader, John Boehner. After the vote the Republican Virginia Foxx declared: "The market may be down, but the constitution is up."
If economic calamity results, there will be many proud authors, beginning with Mr Gohmert, who disrupted proceedings before the first argument. "I would move to adjourn so we don't do this terrible thing to our nation," he said.
His motion went down, 394-8.
Another proud author of the defeat, the Georgian Republican Paul Broun, had an earthy perspective on the bill. "Madam Speaker, this is a huge cow patty with a piece of marshmallow stuck in the middle of it," he declared. "I'm not going to eat that cow patty."
A fellow Republican, Thaddeus McCotter, another opponent, found a precedent in Russian literature. "The choice is stark and it was put forth in the book by Dostoyevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov," he said.
The Republican Todd Akin was a one-man crash of colliding metaphors as he invoked animal imagery ("the horns of a dilemma … two sharp, shiny points we could impale ourselves on"), meteorological imagery ("the sky was going to fall") and weapons imagery ("it's nice to take a bullet for the team").
Supporters of the legislation, by contrast, had trouble mustering the same passion, although the Republican Dan Lungren did find a precedent for the bail-out in his long-ago job as a lifeguard.
His Wisconsin colleague Paul Ryan became entangled in logic as he argued: "This bill offends my principles, but I'm going to vote for this bill to preserve my principles."
Party leaders formed their cross-aisle camaraderie. Democratic leaders gave Mr Boehner a standing ovation for his speech, calling the bill a "mud sandwich" that should be approved anyway.
"Nobody wants to vote for this," the minority leader said. But the vote "will separate
the men from the boys and the girls from the women". Minutes later Mr Boehner's colleagues demonstrated their adolescence.
The House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, went over to shake Mr Boehner's hand after the speech, but it became obvious within minutes of the vote's start that Republicans had rejected their leader's plea.
Democratic and Republican leaders held open the 15-minute vote for 40 minutes, but after several huddles on the floor they finally surrendered.
The Washington Post
