Joe Biden’s supersize government threatens economy

About 15 minutes into Joe Biden’s first major speech as president of the United States, I e-mailed my editors at The Post and said, “I think he’s delivering it beautifully. It’s quiet and intimate and ­intense.” Forty-five minutes later, I sought to comfort myself by thinking of the comedian Mort Sahl’s comment at the premiere of the director Otto Preminger’s “Exodus” when that endless movie hit three hours and kept going.

“Otto,” Sahl shouted, “let my people go!” As the proposals kept coming — all the spending Biden wants, all the taxes he wants to raise (only on the rich, of course), all the things he wants to do to affect every conceivable area of the economy and our common life as a nation — what sounded rational at the outset of the speech started seeming a mite delusional.