Editor's Page

How to think straight about America's imbalanced politics? It's not so easy nowadays. David Plotke's smart article in this issue ought to initiate considerable debate about how we went from the New Deal to Bush's bum deal. Bush has not pulled the country radically to the right, Plotke thinks. Those who claim he has or that he owes his job to ruse must have been sleepwalking through the last decades as the public moved rightward. The president's plunge in the polls is due to his performance more than reproof of conservatism.