In fact, the government’s green plans have actually made things worse.

The Postal Service, for example, deployed thousands of flex-fuel vehicles last year, which have larger engines than the gas-powered ones they replaced. Many of the bigger vehicles were still run using only gasoline, however, because flex-fuel (E85) stations are rare -- there are only 1,689 nationally, compared to more than 160,000 regular gasoline stations. That means postal trucks wasted an additional 1.5 million gallons of gas last year alone.

“I call it the Field of Dreams’ plan. If you buy them, they will come,” Wayne Corey, the Postal Service’s vehicle operations manager, told the Post. “It hasn’t happened.” And it won’t happen just because the government orders it to happen.

When Washington tries to create jobs, it must first tax productive citizens or borrow the money it intends to spend on job programs. This leaves less money available in the private sector, which thus ends up creating fewer jobs.

Meanwhile the federal government tends to crowd out private investors. T. Boone Pickens, for example, seems committed to building wind farms all over Texas. At least, that is the impression his endless series of ads on cable news networks leave one with. So, let him do that. Why does our government need to invest tax money in a project a billionaire is willing to finance? It’ll simply force Pickens back into the oil business.

By the end of the Obama administration, there may well be 2.5 million new jobs in our economy. That because the current slowdown, like all slowdowns, will end, and the economy will grow again.

But when it does, it’ll be because of private industry, not the government, creating jobs. When the campaign finally ends and the governing begins, the Obama administration would be well advised to realize that.