A friend writes: "In his bottomless desire to pander, President Clinton used to propose what some of us came to call 'policy nonsequiturs.' These were ideas that combined two wholly unrelated policies simply because each had proved popular with focus groups. A favorite example was Clinton's proposal to ban handgun sales to deadbeat dads. Focus groups hated unrestricted handgun sales, and they would hiss at the very mention of deadbeat dads, so Clinton thought he could double their power by putting the two together. It was a kind of two-fer, and it didn't matter that the resulting policy was usually unworkable and nonsensical. Clinton's cynicism seldom found a purer expression. "I thought of the policy nonsequitur - and of Clinton - when Mitt Romney denounced 'Washington-style pessimism' in the flush of victory last night. Washington-style huh? There is of course no brand of pessimism that is peculiar to Washington: if anything, all those 'Washington politicians' that Romney has suddenly started denouncing are far too optimistic about their power to make everyone else's lives wonderful through the miraculous workings of government. But Romney (at least this week's version of Romney) has decided that the focus groups are against Washington, and they're against pessimism, too - so imagine the voter appeal if you combined the two! It's an ingenious phrase, Clintonian in the fearlessness of its cynicism. I can't wait to see what he and his focus groups come up with next."