This morning’s paper contains a picture on the front of the Local section showing a family standing behind their McCain-Palin lawn poster. The picture is captioned, “Ron Frear, with wife Karen, Ron Jr. and Shannon, believes in small government.”

It’s hard to argue with that sentiment. I too, believe that government should be no bigger than it absolutely needs to be. The G.O.P. has always hung their hat on smaller government as a fundamental party tenet. They sell this as something they will deliver to their supporters, and conversely position the Democrats as champions of pseudo-Socialism who will usher in a bloated government with excessive and wasteful spending. This is a Republican sales strategy which is clearly resonating with people like Mr. Frear.

The only trouble is, it doesn’t match with reality. Witness a Brookings Institute paper which looks at the number of direct and indirect federal employees from 1990-2002. Look at the table on page 4. It clearly shows that government shrunk under Clinton while expanding under both Bush Sr. and Jr. It’s continued to grow since then.

So Mr. Frear is right that smaller is better when it comes to government, and I encourage him to vote this year for the party that is most likely to bring that to fruition. It’s just that the data would strongly suggest that he’s standing behind the wrong sign.