Last week I mentioned an article by Will Saletan that characterized a lot of Wesley Clark's ideas as stolen from John Kerry; my friend Scott just wrote to me that to "consider ideas to be 'owned' by a candidate" is terrible for a democracy--public officials should feel free to champion the best ideas out there. I agree. It's a sign of the cult of personality and superimportance of branding that the candidates define the set of ideas instead of the candidates being defined by the set of ideas they subscribe to--or better yet, being defined by the wisdom they use in subscribing and efficiency and ethics they use in implementing.