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"A bird may love a fish, but where would they build a home together?" asked the milkman Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Apparently, in Britain's House of Commons. After falling just short of an absolute majority of 326 parliamentary seats in the recent general election, David Cameron's Conservative party (305 seats) has hammered out a deal to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats (57 seats). Cameron, the Tory leader, has "kissed hands," as they say in Britain, and accepted the queen's offer to form a new government. Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, will be deputy prime minister in the first peacetime coalition since the Depression-spawned National Governments of the 1930s.

To say this is an odd couple is to put it mildly. Cameron is wary of ...