SO IT DOES INDEED end with a whimper rather than a bang. Free trade, I mean. Thanks to a president too weak politically to withstand the protectionist surge of a Democratic Congress, the era of ever-freer trade has come to an end. It expired quietly, with few mourners, and some of those who have done it in claiming that the corpse is alive and well.

Susan Schwab, U.S. Trade representative, found it politically necessary to claim that the deal cut by a weakened President Bush and a reluctant Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson with a triumphant Congress “shows the U.S. is not turning protectionist.” I doubt whether her more candid predecessor, Bob Zoellick, could have been persuaded to claim victory in the face of so significant a defeat.