Gary Hart recently paid a visit to our

editorial board here in Dallas. He was singularly unimpressive, if you ask

me. He whined that the country was going to have on offer a series of

Democratic candidates who were self-selected based on the ability to raise

money, thus depriving the nation of a campaign based on “ideas.” Of course,

it is almost certainly the case that the reason Sen. Hart doesn’t have any

money to run for president is that no one thinks he has any fresh or

interesting ideas, or at least no political juice to turn them into policy.

He droned on and on about “multilateralism,” without offering any real

specifics. I told a colleague later that Hart sounded like the kind of

worthy who was born to run a chin-stroking, left-of-center think tank. I

could hardly believe my ears when he trashed Bush for trying to repeal the

New Deal. That line was fresher back in 1984, when Hart and other Dems used

it against Reagan. I started to remind Hart that a Democratic president

declared famously that “the era of big government is over,” but I decided it

was a waste of breath. This guy’s not going anywhere.