Sound and fury signifying--what, exactly?

Two decisions made in the closing days of the Supreme Court's term--rejecting Louisiana's death penalty for child rapists and tossing out the District of Columbia's handgun ban--were each stringently narrow in their immediate import. Yet they sent presidential and Congressional candidates of every stripe scrambling to score easy points.

The most disappointing voice belonged to Barack Obama, who rushed to condemn the Court's 5-to-4 death penalty ruling. Obama's calculation is understandable. In 1988 the proudly card-carrying ACLU-er Michael Dukakis was asked in a debate if he would support the death penalty for the hypothetical rape and murder of his wife, Kitty. Dukakis reiterated his opposition to capital punishment, but, of course, there is no satisfactory sound bite answer to such an insidious question, and the moment hurt his campaign badly. Obama, with his two young daughters, could be even more vulnerable to such a ploy.

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