Let's return for a moment to the report of the Sept. 11 commission — to its observation that the ghastly attacks stemmed, in part, from a failure of imagination. The country had much intelligence and other information about the building threat. What officials failed to do was imagine the full capacity of al-Qaida to strike.

Even Richard Clarke, in urging Condoleezza Rice to imagine the day after an attack, warned about the loss of ''hundreds'' of American lives. As the commission noted: ''He did not write 'thousands.' ''

Imagination is an essential part of sound leadership. The commission advised ''routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination.'' No small task.

Flash forward to the current tangle in Washington over extending unemployment benefits. The discussion has suffered from a lack of imagination.

The relevant numbers are available, charting the plight of the unemployed and the positive impact of the spending on the economy. Almost all lawmakers nod in the direction of the difficulties for households. Hard to believe that anyone with a sufficient clue about the hardship, anxiety and fear of those long without work would allow the extended benefits to lapse.

Yet that is what happened last week. States provide the first 26 weeks of unemployment compensation. The federal government has made a practice of extending coverage for additional weeks during periods of recession and high unemployment. It has done so since the 1950s, and in this rough patch, the jobless rate inching up last month, to 9.8 percent, the coverage has continued for as long as 99 weeks.

That is, until Congress missed the Nov. 30 expiration date. Now households down on their luck face the prospect of losing this lifeline, 108,000 Ohioans this month, the pain mounting, another 67,000 in January, 45,000 in February and 32,000 in March.

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