In his State of the Union address and in the column on the opposite page, President Barack Obama presents what he suggests are bold, new ideas to get our economy going again. It is the same thing he has said at the start of each of the last four years.

Americans are noticing that these ideas are neither bold nor new. Each is a variation of the same old idea: the path to economic recovery is found only when politicians lead select groups of chosen people down it. Obama doesn’t want to be President; he wants to be Moses. Alas, he is not God’s Chosen One, despite what his campaign suggested back in 2008. He is just a guy with some really bad ideas and a really great gift for rhetoric.

The President has tried for his entire first term to convince the people that economic recovery is just a few major federal initiatives away. There was the stimulus, the health care bill, the auto company bailouts, the Dodd-Frank financial regulations bill, high-speed rail, and the green energy “investments” that gave us Solyndra. Now there is this: tax breaks for businesses that do what Obama wants them to do; tax increases for those that do not.

None of this will lead to recovery. What the economy needs is a government that sets uniform, minimal rules and tax rates for everyone, then enforces the rules when they are broken. What it has now is an activist government that starts each new year with yet another set of proposed rules and tax rate changes. We won’t get the former until we get rid of the latter.