It isn’t easy being a public-sector-union leader these days. “This is beyond insane,” said Steve Smith, president of the Providence Teachers’ Union in Rhode Island, reacting to the city’s latest outrageous provocation. “Let’s create the most chaos and the highest level of anxiety in a district where teachers are already under unbelievable stress. Now I know how the United States State Department felt on December 7, 1941.”

Critics took President Smith’s remark as the usual self-aggrandizing comparison of timeserving desk-jockeys to men of action in the thick of it. Except, of course, that Mr. Smith wasn’t comparing himself to anyone in …