POLITICIANS LIKE TO CUT RIBBONS AND AWARD NEW CONTRACTS. MAINTENANCE ISN’T SEXY. Michael Barone: The tragic deterioration of Washington’s Great Society Subway. “If government is what we decide to do together, Metro seemed to be government at its best. But after 40 years it has come to be government at its dreariest, with problems overlooked, maintenance deferred and safety scanted, by employees secure against discipline or dismissal and more concerned about overtime pay and pensions than serving the public. We have seen the same phenomenon across the country.”

At least its decline serves as an object lesson to the denizens of our capital city on how government really works. But there have been a lot of those object lessons, and they still don’t seem to have learned anything.