Pelosi, Trump have few incentives to compromise, so madness will continue

There are those who believe that the president came out the winner in the standoff over the government shutdown. They are what political scientists call very wrong.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went into that pre-shutdown meeting in the Oval Office in early December on somewhat shaky ground with her own caucus. She had taken flak in the midterms from Democrats to her left and her right, and there was some doubt, perhaps overblown, that she