Governors Don’t Transform Economies—for Good or Ill: New at Reason

Governors can formulate better policies, but they can’t cure economic malaise.

A. Barton Hinkle writes:

As he hopped around the state for his official campaign launch over the weekend, Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie laid out the case for why he should move into the Executive Mansion: He’s going to shape a “dynamic economy that creates jobs”—one totally unlike the “anemic economic growth” of the Terry McAuliffe years.

This would be wonderful if Gillespie actually could do that. But he can’t. No governor can.

A governor certainly can improve Virginia public policy. For starters, Gillespie is entirely right to propose “modernizing our outdated tax code, and cutting taxes for families and small business owners and entrepreneurs.”

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