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The war with Iran that never really ended is back on. Like everybody else, including the Trump administration and the Iranian regime, I have no idea how it will end. But it eventually will, and how it will be remembered will matter enormously.

Politics is about many things, but whether you call it “spin,” “framing” or “narrative competition,” storytelling is never far from the heart of it. As the philosopher Richard Rorty observed, “Competition for political leadership is in part a competition between differing stories about a nation’s self-identity, and between differing symbols of its greatness.”

Sometimes the story itself is the point, like the recent clashes over the American founding — 1619 vs. 1776 — and sometimes the story is a means to some other political end, like winning an election or passing controversial legislation. If people believe the spin that elections are routinely stolen thanks to votes by illegal immigrants, then passing the SAVE Act makes sense. If they don’t believe that story — perhaps because it’s not true — but do believe that the bill is another chapter in the story of President Trump’s goal of undermining confidence in elections, then passing it doesn’t make sense.

Very often the story is more lastingly important than the facts.

Take the New Deal. Save for the Founding and the Civil War, I’m hard-pressed to think of a story that shaped American politics more. The modern Democratic Party was defined by it. And in many ways, so was the GOP.

For decades, the reigning view was that President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was a huge success. To deny this was — and often still is — dismissed as nuttery. According to legend, the New Deal unified the country, defeated the Great Depression and proved that politicians and experts could plan the economy for the benefit of all Americans. Hence the unceasing progressive quest for a “new New Deal.”

This story has facts in its favor. It also has facts heavily weighted against........

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