"Le laisser-faire, c'est fini."

It was French president Nicolas Sarkozy who actually uttered the words, but you could draw the same message from watching the televised debates in the United States at both the vice-presidential and presidential level. You know that America's founding economic philosophy is in deep trouble when candidates for our nation's highest office refer easily to "Wall Street greed" and "predatory lenders" to explain the global financial crisis. And those are the Republicans.

Where...