Hold The Whoppers, Mr. President
That’s my first reaction to President Obama’s opening paragraph in his prepared statements yesterday. It’s painfully obvious that President Obama wasn’t being entirely truthful when he said this:
By now, it’s clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.
The conditions President Obama inherited were far from rosy but saying that he faced “an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression” is malarkey.
When FDR was fist inaugurated, unemployment was approximately 25 percent. When President Obama was inaugurated, the unemployment rate was 7.2 percent. In other words, it’s between a third and a fourth of what FDR inherited.
The conditions President Reagan inherited from President Carter were more challenging than the conditions President Obama inherited from President Bush. When President Reagan was inaugurated, the unemployment and inflation rates were both in double digits. Interest rates were high, too.
The more President Obama tries selling these unsubstantiated whoppers, the more his credibility will suffer. In the Internet age, his allegations are easily refuted.
For all his Internet savvy, President Obama hasn’t figured it out yet that credibility that matters most in winning political fights. Ideology isn’t the driving for that it once was.
When President Bush repeatedly told the American people that we were winning the war in Iraq, they could see that, yes, the war had been won but security hadn’t improved. I suspect that had he instituted the Surge in September, 2005, his popularity wouldn’t have plummeted like it did.
When President Obama says that we’re facing an economic crisis unlike anything we’ve seen since the Great Depression, baby boomers understood that they’d faced stiffer challenges during the Nixon and Carter administrations. Here’s another bit of President Obama’s chutzpah shining through:
Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.
President Obama, enough with the fearmongering. Just because you don’t have the solution to the PROBLEMS YOU INHERITED doesn’t mean that they’re unfixable unless we spend hundreds of billions of dollars in a scattershot manner. When President Reagan inherited the mess the Carter administration created, he didn’t make hyperbole-filled speeches. He confidently started with intelligent, time-tested policies that he’d seen work before.
President Obama inherited a less challenging, though still serious, problem. His response was to throw together a package of unprecedented proportion and questionable wisdom. It isn’t that President Obama thinks that we’re facing a Great Depression-like crisis. It’s that he doesn’t want to waste a good crisis. It’s that he wants to pay the Democrats’ political allies under the guise of addressing an unprecedented crisis.
That’s why I feel such a sense of urgency about the recovery plan before Congress. With it, we will create or save more than 3 million jobs over the next two years, provide immediate tax relief to 95 percent of American workers, ignite spending by businesses and consumers alike, and take steps to strengthen our country for years to come.
First, I suspect that President Obama’s urgency in passing this bill is triggered by his desire to pass this pig of a bill while he’s still popular.
Secondly, I challenge the credibility of his statistics. This legislation doesn’t have much in the way of incentives for businesses to invest in their companies. This legislation doesn’t spend a great percentage of the money until the middle of 2010. It’s my belief that this legislation won’t change economic conditions because its intent wasn’t to change economic conditions. Its intention was to satisfy the wants of Democratic special interest groups.
Now that he’s been caught, President Obama is working frantically to reverse perceptions that he’s just another Chicago machine politician.
That won’t happen if he keeps telling Gore-like whoppers.
Technorati Tags: Speeches, President Obama, Al Gore, Hyperbole, Credibility, Pork, Special Interests, Economic Crisis, Great Deression, FDR, Misery Index, Jimmy Carter, Reaganomics, Ronald Reagan
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
February 5th, 2009 at 11:38 am
“…since the days of the Great Depression.” which means this is the second worst economic situation in American history. But what do economists know compared to the genius that is the conservative movement.
February 5th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Gosh, it’s good to know you know your history so well, Liem. The “Great” Depression wasn’t even the worst one in our country’s history, but that matters little to mindless O-bots. Heck, the recession we’re in right now doesn’t even match up with Jimmuh’s. Give it time, though. With the brilliant ignorance displayed by the new administration it’s only a matter of time before they will force us into a depression worse than the “Great” one.
Legislation before Congress now, aided and pushed by the new administration, is nothing more than a payback to major lobbying groups who backed the donks, and a major power grab by the administration.
And, O, BTW, I thought your ilk had abandoned ignorant sites like this since you “won” in November. I’m disappointed.
February 6th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Please, tell me more about this Greater Depression.