An Economic 'Plan'?

An Economic 'Plan'?

Former president Bill Clinton told the Democratic National Convention that Barack Obama has a plan to rescue the economy, and only the fact that the Republicans stood in his way has stopped him from getting the economy out of the doldrums.

From all this, and much else that is said in the media and on the campaign trail, you might think that the economy requires government intervention to revive and create jobs. It is Beltway dogma that the government has to "do something."

History tells a different story. For the first 150 years of this country's existence, the federal...