Throwing the bums out  

Inasmuch as Robert Samuelson is concerned about the proper function of democracy and how democratically arrived-at policies can both have moral force and be good policies, I agree with him. But with his usual unflinching self-ignorance, he completely misses the obvious next step: namely that the press -- the key link, after all, between his "ignorant, confused, and contradictory" policies and his black box notion of public opinion -- bears a large measure responsibility for this state of affairs. Samuelson has a degree in government from Harvard; has he really not read Lippmann?