WHATEVER THE GAME and whatever your age, everybody knows that there are rules. My four-"no daddy, I'm four and half--almost five!"-year-old daughter knows that board games and card games have rules. How else, she explained to me earnestly, are we supposed to know whose turn it is and who wins?

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES, who say everything in just the perfect way and actually do nothing, know in their bones how vacant their words are and cling to the one poll-tested and focus-group ratified act that cannot be reasonably challenged: they profess faith.