E.J. Dionne offers the following in his latest column:

For Republicans, American power is rooted largely in military might and showing a tough and resolute face to the world. They would rely on tax cuts as the one and only spur to economic growth.
Obama, Biden and the Democrats, on the other hand, believe that American power depends ultimately on the American economy, and that government has an essential role to play in fostering the next generation of growth.

Do you know any Republicans who believe that American power is rooted largely in military might and showing a tough and resolute face to the world, or who believe in relying on tax cuts as the one and only spur to economic growth? I’ve been following politics fairly closely for the last fifteen years, and my sense is that Republicans, like Democrats and unaffiliated voters, generally believe that American power is rooted in the wealth and creativity of Americans, and that productivity-enhancing innovative entrepreneurship is the crucial spur to economic growth, though natural increase also plays a role.

Granted, many Republicans, like many Democrats and unaffiliated voters, believe that marginal tax rates — implicit and explicit — have an impact on work effort. This isn’t a terribly controversial observation. But the one and only spur?

I try to offer a good faith interpretation of the views of those with whom I disagree on particular policy issues, in part because the person who disagrees with me on one issue — say, the comprehensive health reform bill backed by congressional Democrats — might agree with me on another — say, reform of copyright laws. I think it’s a useful approach.

The column is based on an interview with the vice president, who went on at considerable length about the sources of American strength.

“Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse,” Obama said. “Meanwhile, China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. These nations aren’t standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.”

One wonders if the vice president has read Yasheng Huang’s Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics to get a sense of how China is revamping its economy. After the Tiananmen uprising, the Chinese abandoned a decade of entrepreneurial growth that saw rural incomes sharply increase in favor of a state-led approach that involved extracting wealth from peasants to subsidize declining state-owned enterprises and FDI. The end result was over a decade in which literacy and health outcomes declined in rural areas despite rapid growth, which was concentrated in favored regions. Hu Jintao has sought to reverse some of these policies, but he’s failed to recapture the successes of the 1980s in large part because he has been unwilling to surrender central control. Praising China’s efforts to revamp its economy, and citing them as a model for the United States, doesn’t strike me as very analytically sound.

Biden suggests that Germany is not waiting. This would come as news to the German officials I’ve met, who are deeply concerned about their country’s economic future. As for India, one should hope that India is moving, in light of its staggering poverty, its shockingly low levels of female literacy, the fact that much of the country is in the grip of violent insurgencies — the Naxalite rebellion and various separatist rebellions in the northeastern states, leaving aside Kashmir — and many other problems besides. Economist Lant Pritchett has said that the inefficiencies plaguing the Indian civil service are a global problem on the scale of climate change. The idea that an India that is not standing still poses a competitive threat to the United States is simply bizarre.

So what exactly would Joe Biden have us do to revamp our economy? For one example, take a look at Neil King Jr.’s Wall Street Journal article on Fisker Automotive, a boutique manufacturer of luxury electric automobiles.

Some young companies are tailoring their business plans to win DOE cash. Private investors, meanwhile, are often pulling back, waiting to see which projects the government blesses. Success in winning federal funds can attract a flood of private capital, companies say, while conversely, bad luck in Washington can sour their chances with private investors. The result is an intertwining of public and private-sector interests in an arena where politics is never far from the surface.
In Delaware, “We had five individuals beating the band — the three members of the [congressional] delegation, the governor and the vice president,” said the state’s chief of economic development, Alan Levin. “We had in the vice president a secret weapon, except there is nothing secret about Joe Biden.”

I sincerely believe that Joe Biden sincerely believes that heavily subsidizing electric sedans that will be made in his home state represents the kind of revamping that America needs to keep India and China and Germany in their place.

But I have to say, I think that there are better ways to achieve the same end. To be sure, the approach I have in mind is complicated. It’s not as easy as spending money on corporations with savvy government relations arms. Rather, it involves revamping — there’s that word again — our schools so that they do a more effective job of preparing students for the workforce, a process that will involve using more distance education and other low-cost alternatives to a broken school system. That won’t fit on a bumper sticker. More broadly, it will involve right-sizing all levels of government to sustainable levels while increasing the capacity of those public institutions that prove capable of doing their jobs well. Frustratingly, saying this is a lot harder than saying, “We’re going to kick some German tail.”

Even so, I figure that telling the complicated truth is its own reward.