Political reality can sometimes alter itself with breathtaking speed.
That's the lesson the Big Five tobacco companies are most likely absorbing from their ill-fated experiment with political compromise, which they called to a halt last week. It was a staggering amount of money, and it seemed to herald a new era of accommodation between public-health officials and the tobacco industry. But rather than convince Congress and the White House of Big Tobacco's new reasonableness, the deal fostered an impression that Big Tobacco was politically weaker, and therefore more vulnerable to legislative restrictions, than was previously thought. Soon Democrats and Republicans were competing to show who could inflict more pain on tobacco companies. We're not going to support anything the industry is for.