Beginning to feel a lot like Mailbag

Long movies, dysfunctional agencies, and the case for incumbency advantage

At the suggestion of Matthew Edwards in the comments of “Secret Congress delivers more good news on clean water,” I’m going to try to routinely include some positive developments at the top of these mailbag columns.

The obvious one this week, I think, is the inclusion of the Electoral Count Act in the omnibus appropriations bill. The ECA will help forestall efforts to steal future presidential elections, which is good on its own terms. But more broadly, its inclusion represents implicit recognition on the part of GOP leadership that what Trump did at the end of his presidency was really bad in ways that transcend partisan politics. And I think that’s worth noting not because the ECA solves every problem, but because I think its passage does cut against certain widely-made, super-pessimistic forecasts that I haven’t really seen people revisit, even though it’s been looking likely that this would happen for a while now.

I’m also glad to see governor-elect Maura Healy talking about the n…