"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."

So lectures a popular bumper sticker in my university-dominated neighborhood. And according to an emerging journalistic narrative of this campaign season, ordinary Americans are indeed outraged -- at the Iraq war, at gas prices, and by the fact that their houses are not rising in value. As a July 4 Associated Press headline put it, "Americans' unhappy birthday: 'Too much wrong.'"

One...