One of the most pernicious misconceptions of our time is that the Bush administration represented an era of free-market capitalism. By wrongly blaming the financial crisis and economic woes associated with Bush on his alleged devotion to laissez-faire, many in the mainstream press, academia and political life are misdiagnosing the problem and prescribing the wrong solution: More government, which will in reality only make things worse.
Big-government Republicans like Bush have done more than their part to encourage the confusion. By branding themselves as friends of the free market, budget hawks, tax cutters, deregulators and champions of constitutionally limited government, all while pushing the opposite agenda, they have helped create the impression that the disasters resulting from their interventionist meddling are the consequence of free enterprise.
If more government will make things worse, it's going to get worse, much worse. Laissez-faire is free market capitalism. It's not laissez-faire when government regulates, taxes and interferes with market forces but that is what government has been doing. And the worse the crisis gets, the more control government exerts.
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