“[W]hat we did with the auto industry,” President Obama told a crowd in Colorado Springs, Colo., last week, “we can do it in manufacturing across America. Let’s make sure advanced, high-tech manufacturing jobs take root here, not in China.”

For anyone who understands the nature of GM’s “success,” and of Obama’s previous attempts to prop up American companies like Solyndra against Chinese competitors, this campaign rhetoric is somewhat dispiriting. It serves as a troubling confirmation that Obama has learned absolutely nothing from three and a half years of trying unsuccessfully to reshape and reinvigorate the American economy through bailouts and subsidies. Obama’s industrial plan continues apace, oblivious to the losses and failures it has created so far.