This week in the saga

The repeal campaign opens the way all his campaigns open — with total declared confidence and a stack of pages slammed like a gauntlet. But the first defectors are already walking the colonnade, and the week's true image is the painter before the nearly blank canvas: the beautiful picture exists so far only in the telling. The citadel he besieges is crumbling on its own; the question the chapter will answer is whether his army can even hold formation long enough to storm a ruin.