And Washington always obligingly reinforces that prejudice, which is a great saving of mental energy, since it takes a lot of work to change a good prejudice. You'll be pleased to know that the conventional wisdom du jour here is that they might as well discuss the minutiae of a campaign to which the rest of the country is paying no attention, since the government has pretty much solved all the country's problems and has nothing more to do. I pity this crop of presidential candidates. The nation is prosperous. It is at peace.
Crime is down.
The Dubya2K problem, in the estimate of these complacent souls, is that government has nothing more to do. Or maybe it's like grand opera, with all these stock characters raging around the stage carrying on about something hilariously implausible at very high decibel levels. Well, sports fans, there's politics and then there's government. Politics may not touch our lives, but government sure as daybreak does. And actual governance is quite capable of making our lives nasty, brutish and short.