In an op-ed published this week by The Washington Post, Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) makes the case for why conservatives ought to support top-down industrial policy set by the federal government—and, inadvertently, also provides a concise illustration of just how incoherent and illogical that idea actually is.
The article's headline—which was likely applied by the Post's editors and not Rubio himself, but nonetheless captures the spirit of the piece—promises to explain why the senator believes in industrial policy "done right." At its heart, Rubio's argument is no more complex than that: Industrial policy is good when he gets to be in charge and bad when someone else is running it.
