Obama’s ‘New’ Industrial Policy

Last night, after the SOTU, Politico Arena asked:

State of the Union: How did he do?

My response:


If you don’t look behind the stirring rhetoric, this was a fine performance — and many of Obama’s supporters will leave it right there. But behind it all is a single theme: People have problems, and government’s job is to solve those problems. Obama and his people, including many in Congress, still don’t get it. The recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts were not about government doing more or better. They were not about all the subsidies or jobs programs or green initiatives Obama spoke about tonight. They were about government getting out of the way — about lowering taxes and lifting burdensome regulations so that businesses, large and small, can once again provide the jobs and the prosperity that have been crippled by the kinds of programs Obama was promoting tonight. This was micromanagement from Washington. We need management from Main Street.


Early on in his speech Obama said that many Americans don’t understand “why Washington has been unable or unwilling to solve any of our problems.” Doubtless that’s true. But many more Americans do understand why. And so, as when he said that health care reform was in trouble because he had not explained it more clearly, Obama continues to believe that the problem is with the messenger, not with the message. Fortunately, we have elections in this country. I predict that come November the people will make it clear again that we don’t need yet another round of “industrial policy.” We need less of that, and more of what this country is really about — freedom.