Jobs speeches

Mitt Romney unveiled his jobs agenda Tuesday in North Las Vegas, and there were no show stoppers or policy surprises. "Believe in America" is a 160-page articulation of everything Mr. Romney, a leading Republican presidential candidate, has been saying for years.

Reduce the corporate tax rate to make the country more globally competitive. Encourage investing. Promote free trade and rein in regulation. Cut federal spending.

"America should be a job machine," Mr. Romney said, promising his policies, if enacted, would create 11.5-million private-sector jobs and 4 percent annual economic growth in his first term. "Growth is the answer, not government."

President Obama is supposed to present his jobs plan to a joint session of Congress tonight. As with Mr. Romney's speech, no shockers are expected. The president is expected to propose more of what he has already tried: billions more dollars in stimulus spending, extended jobless benefits and more bailouts for state and local governments.

Political campaigns -- especially presidential ones -- are not proving grounds for the abstract and experimental. They are exercises in repeating the familiar. Policy positions and talking points are copied, over and over, especially if they poll well and have led to election victories.

Mr. Romney's ideas, while hardly original, have worked. Capitalism and free-market principles have, over more than two centuries, made the United States the envy of the world -- even in this dreadful economy. Mr. Obama's ideas, meanwhile, have been recycled from the scrap heap of failed social-welfare and central-planning states.

Our best advice to the president tonight: Copy Mr. Romney's ideas instead.