Yesterday I tuned in to Marketplace on my NPR affiliate and caught the American Enterprise Institute's David Frum opining on Obama's economic plan. His mournful lament began as expected, but midway through the stanza on the evils of government spending he abruptly launched into improvisation.

Frum smartly identified -- drumroll, please -- wage stagnation as one of our chief economic ills. To me, this seemed akin to playing Epistrophy at a Salieri concert, or uttering "Voldemort" before the Hogwarts assembly. But my man was just getting warmed up.

Emboldened, Frum then chided Republicans for not leavening their obstructionism with substantive ideas. For example's sake, he added, he'd proffer a few of his own. 

I was intrigued. But just momentarily.

For at this point the soloist terminated his renegade riff and returned to the AEI songbook. His "ideas" were not substantive at all, but musty, dusty conservative standards. Deport all the immigrants and give those low-wage jobs back to the Americans that deserve them. Drive down health care premiums by attacking regulation, the medical insurance industry's version of irritable bowel syndrome.

Aside from the fact that these "novel ideas" would do little to address wage stagnation, much less expand access to affordable health care, Frum didn't finish where he should have started -- with the total inability the previous administration and its economic policy to create jobs.

Even according to (gasp) the Wall Street Journal, the Bush administration's performance on this score is among the lamest on record. Only 3 million net jobs were created during the Bush years. This is just a fraction of the 23 million jobs created during the Clinton administration. At 2.3 percent, payroll expansion was equally abysmal.

Yes, David. Government was the problem. Republicans, who with few exceptions haven't been real adept at increasing employment, tried to swap easy credit for good jobs and sustainable incomes. Result? Endemic underemployment, and household debt  that is now 130 percent of income.

The Bush tax cuts made another run at trickle-down economics. But the money didn't trickle down, it trickled up. Result? Spurning the old-fashioned notion of investing money to create economic value, wealthy money managers and unregulated investment banks  instead tried to make money out of money.

There has to be a better way.

To me, one of the more memorable lines in what I thought was a powerful and compelling inaugural address was this: "The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous."

Words to the wise. It's about jobs, stupid.