To be credible, the Democrats need ideas of their own. Mr Gingrich may have opposed everything the Democrats did in the 1990s, but he also had a positive and radical manifesto, the Contract with America. On Social Security, the Democrats have no plan really at all; the same goes for education, the economy and foreign policy. No wonder such a pessimistic party does so badly in America's fastest growing regions.

The Democratic revival, The Economist, May 28, 2005.

Contract with America, as ambitious as it is, is only the agenda of the first hundred days of the first Republican-controlled House of Representatives in more than four decades. It represents the first substantive steps on the road to a smaller government with lower taxes and fewer regulations.

Passage of the Contract will dramatically change the way Washington does business, and change the business Washington does. In two years the public will have a record to look at, and they will know whether Republicans really were different when they took control of the people's House for the first time in forty years, or if they slipped easily into business as usual.

Contract with America, The Bold Plan by Rep. Newt Gingrich, Rep. Dick Armey, and the House Republicans to Change the Nation (E. Gillespie and B. Schellhas, Eds), Times Books, New York, 1994.

great blue heron (Ardea herodias)

Tantra Lake, Boulder, CO

The changes were not as dramatic as envisioned

but Republicans have the initiative ever since;

was overshooting intentional?