Wrong drift

I am a huge fan of Joseph Epstein but not much of politics as we know it. Epstein's "The Unstoppable Appeal of 'Going Forward'" in today's WSJ (gated) does it for me. "Going forward" is one of those anodyne (probably road tested) phrases, contrived for feel-good appeal but committing to nothing. "Hope and change"?

Many people are wise to this stuff and turned off.  Many others enjoy the team sports appeal of politics. I suppose that there is a third group grudgingly optimistic that the effort must be made to make the best of a bad situation -- and at least slow down the bad ideas and even promote some good ones.

This is one reason why in a federal system, the more that is done locally, the better.  The more local, the greater the chance that real discussions of real questions occur.  Too bad that our drift is in the opposite direction.