Vying For the Lowest Honour

History and President Obama

There is a fair old chance that President Obama, once he has departed the White House and the dust has settled, will suffer the indignity of  the "worst US President ever" sobriquet.  (We understand that presently that dishonour belongs to President Buchanan.)

We imagine that historians will agree that he was a nice bloke, albeit with a challenged golf swing.   He was well-meaning, earnest at times, and a great orator (provided his teleprompter was working).  He achieved the high honour of being the first black US President.  It is deeply regrettable that he will most likely be judged as one of the more ignorant, naive and simplistic people ever to occupy the office.


One of the criticisms we are sure will be made is that when it came to business and wealth creation, productivity and growth President Obama was woefully ignorant.  He made a bad slump much, much worse.  He had only one deeply held conviction about the economy: the Federal government is the first mover and primary cause of economic growth. It was an ideological conviction, not empirically based.  He never understood that the economics of a nation is fundamentally no different from household economics.  In other words, he lacked common sense.

Obama has just delivered yet another speech--this time to the summoned houses of Congress--to pitch for jobs.  Here is Patterico cutting to the chase.

I just presented my wife with a proposal that I buy me a shiny new car I can’t afford. I asked her if she is going to put family first and approve my proposal now.  It is a bipartisan proposal, even though she doesn’t agree with it, because the word bipartisan sounds good.  And it won’t cost us a cent, because my proposal pays for the car, through unspecified cuts in the “out years.”

One of my bipartisan proposals to pay for my shiny new car includes my wife taking on a second job and not spending any money on new clothes.

She’s not buying my proposal. In fact, there is no such proposal. I made it up for rhetorical purposes. Not that I’m that enamored of my 11-year-old car with 130,000 miles.

Here’s the problem. I’m not going to do something we can’t afford and justify it with phony arguments and lies.  Read that last sentence out loud three times, Mr. President.

Sounded nice, huh?  That would have been a better speech.

Now, read over again what Patterico has written.  That bit about 

I just presented my wife with a proposal that I buy me a shiny new car I can’t afford. . . . And it won’t cost us a cent, because my proposal pays for the car, through unspecified cuts in the “out years.”

is precisely the inane argument, mutatis mutandis Obama made before Congress.  Using Obama's logic one could justify any amount of personal spending, on anything, at any time.  On his reasoning, debt does not exist and debt financing makes no negative impact upon the present--because it is always covered; it is always paid for.  On the President's logic debt is nothing more than an accounting convention, not an economic or monetary reality.  This is head shaking stuff.  Try telling that to your bank manager.

When basic common sense is able to make such a telling, cutting criticism of the President of the United States you realise just how inadequate President Obama is for the job.  Nice bloke.  Hapless president.

Way, way below his current pay grade.