Washington vs. 'Common Sense' - We don't need more laws and bureaucracy to tell us how to do better.

by Phillip K. Howard  at The Wall Street Journal

'Let's try common sense," President Obama said in the State of the Union address, provoking a spontaneous burst of laughter in the House of Representatives chamber. The unintended humor exposes an important truth about Washington: Everyone knows that won't happen.

More troubling, however, was that the president's speech revealed why common sense is nonexistent. Mr. Obama wants new laws to tell us how to do things better—when the need is to overhaul old laws to restore freedom of choice and individual responsibility. Up and down the chain of authority, the accumulation of law and entitlements precludes sensible decisions.

Mr. Obama seems to see law as social engineering, not as a framework to guide the choices of real people. In his speech, he advanced a series of reforms doomed to fail because humans don't have freedom to use their common sense: …

Fixing modern government, Peter Drucker once observed, requires returning to first principles. What's missing in government is the activating principle of all human accomplishment—individual responsibility. America must shift the goal of reform from desired results—universal health care, effective schools—to a new philosophy that allows people to get things done. Read more…