We spend our idle hours fretting not about the economy, but about matters of home and hearth. We want our kids to grow up healthy and good. We want schools to teach the basics. We want prisons to lock up the bad people. And we want state authorities to build new roads and fill potholes in the old ones.
Republicans make the mistake of talking about taxes in accounting terms rather than human ones.
They deliver carny huckster promises of what an additional four bucks per day could mean for the average family of four. The good economy also has undercut liberal Democrats. Bill Clinton's most recent State of the Union Address featured 99 new programs, not half of which he or his speech writers could name today. They offered eloquent testimony to the fact that we no longer trust the government to do big jobs other than wars. The booming economy has both parties atwitter.