The powerful -- be they church leaders or politicians -- always seem to forget the one lesson of history: everything changes. The party in power today is not going to be the party in power in a decade, or next year. The group you made a gentleman's agreement with this election cycle is going to be a completely different group, with different demands, next one. And yet, the powerful insist on trying to weaken the rules that keep them from being still more powerful, as if that could fend off the day of their fall -- and the rise of others, probably their opponents, who will operate under the same weakened rules and ugly precedents. Unfortunately, in those sorts of payback situations, nobody's a winner.