You don't see it in satellite photos, or from the Mississippi River gazing east. But Illinois has shrunk. If you've lived here for a while, you sense it: A place that for two centuries has been a muscular engine — a whole state of big shoulders, employed and building economic productivity — has petered toward the bottom of one national ranking after another. No garrulous political sweet talk can convince you that, on its present trajectory, desultory Illinois will, or even can, revive the growth that made it great.