There is plenty of good news about American government

One of donald trump’s finest acts as president was to blow off the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Of the annual rubber-chicken events that mark Washington’s calendar, it is the most decadent, a pageant of self-importance that illuminates the distance of the federal city from the people it is supposed to serve. At the other end of the spectrum of semi-official functions is the event honouring the winners of the “Service to America” medals, the so-called Sammies. It might not sound dazzling: the medals go to bureaucrats who made the bureaucracy better. Yet it is a reliably inspiring affair. It has heart where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, in its flashes of authenticity, musters only spleen.