Here.

Whether reasonable or unreasonable, the Democrats' spending priorities antedate the financial crisis. Pre-existing agendas in politics are easily painted as evidence of bad faith. In 2004, as the Iraq occupation ran into trouble, a flurry of books presented the Bush administration's obsession with Saddam Hussein before 9/11 as prima facie evidence of the administration's crookedness. Democrats were not noticeably quick to call this standard unfair.

President Obama has gone beyond the minimum requirements of bipartisanship to ensure the stimulus is transparent, once enacted. Accounts of the programmes will be posted on an easily accessible website. At his urging, Democrats stripped non-essential measures that could rile Americans needlessly, such as several hundred million dollars for family planning. And Mr Obama is popular, albeit not as popular as George W. Bush on the eve of the Iraq war.

Bipartisanship offers little shelter over the long run. The stimulus will be expensive, more expensive than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined and Nancy Pelosi, Senate majority leader, has called it a mere "down payment." The stimulus bill, whether it succeeds or fails, could be the Democrats' Iraq. Like Iraq, it is a long-standing partisan project that is being marketed as an ad hoc response to a national emergency. It reflects the pre-existing wishes of the party’s most powerful interest groups more than the pre-existing wishes of the country. Democrats are now liable to be judged by the standard they created when they abandoned the Bush administration over the Iraq war: you break it, you own it.