Recent polls show that Republican voters are more scared of big government than they are of big business. For Democratic supporters, that order is reversed. Antitrust policy, where the government must decide what constitutes fair or unfair competition, is a partisan flashpoint. The Obama administration’s hawkish stance on competition is to be expected. But it is, nonetheless, to be welcomed.

Christine Varney, the assistant attorney-general in charge of antitrust policy, gave a speech this week that repudiated a September 2008 document issued by her predecessors on dominant companies, chiding it for its hesitancy. This document reflected the Bush administration’s timid, hands-off attitude to competition; for eight years, no actions were brought by the Department of Justice against companies that dominated their markets.