The Cost Of Being Blue (washingtonpost.com)
Columnist David Broder's latest, on the way the election results will impact American urban policy.
...presidents and members of Congress respond to those who put them in office. As Ronald Brownstein and Richard Rainey wrote in the Los Angeles Times, Bush's biggest gains came in 100 fast-growing exurban counties, on the far fringes of metropolitan areas, where the countryside is giving way to new housing developments. Many of the families filling those homes are transplants from the cities. It is no coincidence that the part of the federal government most closely attuned to urban problems is the Cabinet agency most remote from this White House. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been run -- even in Republican administrations -- by prominent and dynamic figures, from George Romney to Jack Kemp. Today, few in Washington can even name the man in charge of the city agenda.
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