One of the many depressing things about the 2000 election

has been the tactical blurring of principled differences. Al Gore is for patients' rights? So is George W. Bush. Gore has a plan for prescription drug coverage. Bush does, too. Gore would allocate trillions to Social Security. Likewise Bush.

Never mind that Gore's plans are closer to the genuine article. Most voters pay attention only to the headlines. The details are numbing. Bush gets away with seeming to be for popular Democratic positions that most of his party opposes. What the headline promises, the details take back. But the headline is sufficient to steal Gore's thunder.

All of us find ourselves shocked to be living, abruptly, in a wholly new era--and none were more shocked than the Bush administration. Globally, the White House is now pursuing a feverish multilateralism, a reversal of the Powell Doctrine to avoid "shooting wars" that we can't easily win, and even may soon embrace yesterday's conservative epithet "nation building." Domestically, the holy free market stands impeached, and even Republicans are necessarily looking to government for everything from civil defense to public health to economic stimulus. As a partisan, Bush seems more like Clinton, governing in coalition with the opposition party and outraging his own troops.