On Social Security, the habit of expecting in some undefined way to come up with the resources for the old ages we plan to spend by the fireside with grandchildren capering nearby -- that habit is hard to overcome. The president tries to explain what the problem is and how we need more individual initiative (read: private accounts), and we're morose and unhappy, even though we have no specific alternatives. The longer Congress seems bogged down, the more morose and unhappy we grow. We don't know the solution, but whatever we don't see -- that's probably it.

 Energy, the environment, stem cell research, judicial nominations -- it's all pretty much the same.

 There's nothing in this state of affairs to make either Democrats or Republicans surpassingly happy. The Democrats brag on their skill at blocking Republican initiatives. Return the Democrats to power, though, as some day we will, and they'll find us as fretful and hard to please as ever.

 It all comes down to a basic proposition: Government can't solve basic human problems. We only think it can, having been led to think so by decades of academic and journalistic propaganda. No government can know what's best for nearly 300 million people; only the people themselves have the slightest intuition.

 On we go anyway -- one Congress after another prescribing in different flavor and degree the medicine of government. And polls recording the same old yawns, the same growls of discontent and remorse.