And the winner is...Arizona

The American Legislative Exchange Council have designed a competitiveness index for American states based on similar global indices.

The winners are Arizona, Florida, and Texas while Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio are losing it. Accordingly, this should serve as a model for what the US would look like under either Obama or McCain. So the reasoning goes (naturally for this logic to be successful you have to completely ignore the fact that Bush has been President for almost eight years and the consequent outsourcing and credit crunch as well as ignore the diversity of the American states in everything from population to geography to industrial potential) an America under McCain will look like one giant Arizona, however, under Obama the US will resemble...Illinois.

Phil Gramm whines to Wall Street Journal readers: “We now face a national choice to determine if everything that has failed the families of Michigan, Ohio and Illinois will be imposed on a grander scale across the nation. In an appropriate twist of fate, Michigan and Ohio, the two states that have suffered the most from the policies that Mr. Obama proposes, have it within their power not only to reverse their own misfortunes but to spare the nation from a similar fate.”