Frank Smith Did Seventy Years. Congress Couldn't Do One Summer.

Frank Smith died this week at 101, having spent seventy of those years in prison — sent to death row in 1950, for a killing during what was, by every account, a very different country. He was commuted to life partway through and simply outlasted the sentence, more or less — the Times ran his story alongside four others who did the same, decades folded into decades, an entire policy era of parole boards and commutations working itself out one aging man at a time. Seventy years is longer than most institutions manage to hold a consistent shape — longer than the Cold War lasted, longer than most of the senators currently in office have been alive.

Which made an odd companion to Paul Ryan, of all people, publicly wondering this week whether Congress can still pass big reforms — not as a gotcha, more as an actual question from someone who once tried and mostly failed. The evidence around him isn’t encouraging: another spending deal that mostly blocks the administration’s priorities instead of building anything, a summer spent dodging a shutdown rather than using the majority for much of anything. One system in this country just proved it can hold a shape for seven decades without anyone really deciding to let it. The other can’t hold one for seven months without a near-miss.

Small footnote from the same news cycle: the Defense Secretary is out campaigning for Senate candidates while the war his department is still fighting grinds on, unresolved. Nobody seems to find that strange anymore, which might be the actual story.