Just behind John Baldacci's desk, under dutiful portraits of the first Maine governor and his wife, there's a small plaque with a question carved into the wood: ''What have you done for the people today?''
This is not the quote of a great philosopher or some modern pollster. It's what Baldacci's father, a JFK Democrat and Italian restaurant owner from Bangor, used to ask, with needling humor, when his son came home from a long, hard day of lawmaking.
If all goes well, Governor Baldacci will have a pretty decent answer. Maine has just become the first state in the union to approve a plan to provide universal access to affordable health insurance.
And in the Beltway, they're arguing about prescription drugs. Band-aid on a cancer....