As we discussed on Thursday, Dayton has running an amazingly sleazy, fact-free campaign for governor.

But let’s say – heaven forfend – that he wins.  What then?

Welcome back to the 1970s.

Mark Dayton’s entire plan is a throwback to a mythical era in Minnesota politics, the sixties and seventies, when DFLers joined hands with (suitably liberal) Republicans to fashion a large, communitarian welfare state that aggressively redistributed wealth from the parts of the state that worked, back then, to the parts that didn’t at the time – a time when Minnesota’s booming private industries “partnered” with government and academia to build a progressive, benevolent, forward-thinking state that was the envy of much of the rest of the country.

Let’s accept it all at face value for now; let’s say that the “Minnesota Miracle” was exactly that; a project guided by the wise, benevolent hand of “good government”.

The “Miracle”, even by that tolerant definition, depended on a number of factors that were unique to that era:

• Minnesota was a sleeping giant: The state had underperformed for the first century of its existence – and made up for lost time, taking advantage of its natural advantages in communication, resources and population to take its place as the largest commercial, industrial and population center between Chicago and the west coat.
• The US was #1!: The United States was still by a good stretch the world’s most powerful economy in 1960-1970.  The Japanese and German economic powerhouses were gathering steam – but in a very real sense, they were still rebuilding and gaining momentum from World War II (remember – 1967 was half as far from VJ Day as it is from today).  China was in the throes of Maoism, and had an economy the size of Mississippi, and wasn’t lending anyone anything but cheap Kalashnikovs and Little Red Books.  The US economy was head, shoulders and ankles bigger than our competition.
• Minnesota Was Breaking New Turf: The academic and private research markets were delving into new territories that were brand-new at the time; computers, medicine, healthcare, defense, and industrial research that led us to companies as diverse as 3M, Honeywell, Ecolab, Control Data, Cray and a host of others.  And the booming US consumer market, as well as an immense export market for which the US was the #1 supplier, gave immense domestic and export opportunities to General Mills, Pillsbury, Daytons, Target and a range of other home-grown corporations that grew into giants.

Add those three factors up, and you have a recipe for immense, nearly effortless earnings without a whole lot of competition.

But the world has changed since 1970, when the myth of the Minnesota Miracle was created.  Japan and Germany have been joined by South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia as significant competitors.  China, hobbled by totalitarian madness forty years ago, has turned into the world’s fastest growing economy.  India, written off as unsalvageable forty years ago by the likes of Paul Ehrlich, has turned into a huge competitor as well as a large market.

The conditions that allowed Minnesota’s government, and its government unions and other hangers-on, to latch like a leech onto Minnesota’s market and still allowed both to grow fat and happy are not here anymore.

So why would anyone think that returning to the same system (only more!) would yield the same results?

Indeed, why would anyone think that acting like a California or a Greece or a New York would make Minnesota anything but a cold California, a chilly Greece, a windy New York – in debt, floundering, and cold to boot?

The short answer – there is no rational reason. It is impossible and irrational.

Minnesota deserves better than to have an obsolete myth foisted on it by a past-his-shelf-date demigogue.

Previous Reasons Dayton Should Not Be Governor

• #3: Unexamined
• #4: Fool Us Three Times
• #5: We Are Better Than This