WASHINGTON’S BIGGEST LOSERS OF 2008. My favorite:

Public Financing. In the words of one former Republican campaign staffer, “It didn’t just lose, it died. Dead dead. Drawn, quartered, its entrails burned while its body was hung.” And while Obama aides are feeling pretty smug about their “small-donor” model, one wonders what will happen when the rock star is just another president presiding over midterms. The policy was a noble goal that died at the hands of a former proponent, a death that’s almost Shakespearean in its symmetry but much much more boring.

Well, the one on John Kerry is pretty good, too.