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Is President Obama listening to the message of the German election? It couldn't be clearer: no new taxes. Germany has decisively rejected the tired nostrums of the Social Democratic Party, which campaigned on raising taxes on the wealthy and was the junior partner of the Christian Democrats in a grand coalition during the past four years. The Social Democrats turned in their worst performance in the history of the Federal Republic, a mere 23 percent, while the Free Democratic Party (FDP) polled a record 14.6 percent. The Christian Democrats crawled across the finish line with 33.9 percent.

Thus the election, widely touted as boring and uninteresting, proved to be anything but. The FDP, which espouses a classical liberal program of slashing taxes and curbing government...