Even when they are trying to be even-handed, academics can't hide their biases. "While it is certainly true that the public has a decidedly negative view on 'the way things are going in the country today,' (to borrow the wording of a recent poll by the Pew Research Center), it is less well known that these feelings of decline are a consistent feature of the American political landscape," Stephen Rose, a Research Professor at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy, writes in The Washington Monthly. "For example, in 1999, a year in which we had had seven straight years...