Too great a love for the presidency has caused Democrats to neglect state and local politics and to overly prize compromise and a futile quest for bipartisanship. It has made liberals too allergic to federalism and too shy about grassroots politics.

Too great a love for the presidency has caused Democrats to neglect state and local politics and to overly prize compromise and a futile quest for bipartisanship. It has made liberals too allergic to federalism and too shy about grassroots politics.

Americans have, at various times, leaned on the FBI for a measure of justice that local and state police couldn't be counted on to deliver, and recoiled in fear at their exercise of raw federal power. That uneasy trust; the combination of need and dread, is the lot that FBI agents live with day to day.

Being on a grand jury felt like attending a series of hangings in a legal Wild West. Hands up for a true bill. Hands up for a dismissal. A show of hands to save a life, or to end it.

Local government is a gamble that can have disastrous consequences when it fails.