Pundits all seem to agree that our nation has never been more divided. Yet, the two major parties actually have plenty of common ground. When Clinton famously declared the era of big government to be over, some thought (hoped?) the common ground would come from Democrats accepting the superiority of markets over command and control. But after four years of Bush, it’s clear that Democrats aren’t the ones who have given up on their traditional goals. Here’s Jacob Sullum on the GOP platform: [F]ar from being embarrassed about the spending binge over which he has presided, Bush is proud of it. “President Bush and Congressional Republicans have provided the largest increase in federal education funding in history,” brags the GOP platform, which borrows the Clintonian trick of calling spending “investing.” It praises Bush for increasing farm subsidies and for “strengthening Medicare” by hastening its insolvency through a drug benefit that is projected to cost more than half a trillion dollars during its first decade and as much as $2 trillion the decade after that.