Why Won't Americans Listen to Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles?

One chilly afternoon last December, former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson slipped out of a car and into the studio on New York’s West Side where Jon Stewart tapes The Daily Show. At 6-foot-7, Simpson is hard to miss. He’s all the more recognizable, even to the hipsters and tourists queuing for the show, for having spent the last two years as the Republican partner of Democrat Erskine Bowles, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, with whom he has toured the country almost nonstop, warning of America’s impending fiscal doom.