Real State program authority

Lasting principles and clear, simple statements do rise above the specifics of any situation. But it is startling how out-of-date and out-of-touch each party's platform seems when compared with the details in the essays that follow. Indeed, if one theme emerges from these essays, it is how disconnected our official politics has become from the real-world, fast-changing, interesting-in-their-details elements that constitute our national welfare. After the recent midterm elections everyone said that the Democrats had suffered because they had run out of good ideas. That was partly true. But the Republicans don't have much to brag about either. The Democrats have over the past two years stood for the ideas that the Republican tax policy was unfair but not unfair enough to actually vote against, and that the Administration's strategy toward Iraq was rash but not rash enough to oppose. Meanwhile, the Republican domestic agenda can without too much violence be summarized as: reduce income taxes and eliminate the "death tax."