Week of Jan. 28, 2008

In the most exciting and confounding election cycle of my lifetime, Rudy Giuliani, the Prince of the City, is out because he was about to lose New York, John Edwards is out, the Clintons are fighting for their historical reputations, and the stalwart conservative New York Post has come out strong and stinging for Barack Obama. If you had asked me in December if I would write that sentence in February, I would have said: Um, no.

Most countries celebrate the best in their past. Germany unrelentingly promotes its worst.

All Republican candidates want to make President Bush’s deep tax cuts permanent, and even to expand on them. Rudolph Giuliani has promised to pass the largest tax cut in U.S. history. But this is yesterday’s policy trying to pass itself off as tomorrow’s. Americans are evenly split on whether taxes ought to be raised back to pre-Bush levels. Large majorities would gladly pay more in taxes for various purposes (notably more access to health care). Voters, it seems, have begun asking of entrepreneurs and their champions what they asked of hippies around 1971: Aren’t you liberated enough already?