Legacy: The same day the 0.5% GDP growth came out, President Obama is quoted in the New York Times saying the country has done “better” than “any large economy on Earth in modern history.” Delusional doesn’t begin to cut it.
The only real problem with the economy, as far as Obama is concerned, is that he hasn’t been selling his successful policies aggressively enough.
“We were moving so fast early on that we couldn’t take victory laps. We couldn’t explain everything we were doing. I mean, one day we’re saving the banks; the next day we’re saving the auto industry; the next day we’re trying to see whether we can have some impact on the housing market,” he told the Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Never mind that Obama didn’t “save” either industries. Obama’s only contribution to GM and Chrysler’s bankruptcy process was to protect union interests at taxpayer’s expense. Dodd-Frank didn’t save banks; in fact it’s killed multitudes of community banks. His stimulus was a massively expensive bust.
The rest of Obama’s boasts aren’t on any firmer ground.
Obama talks about 14.4 million new jobs since 2010, without noting that working age population grew by 15.8 million over those same months.
He touts the 5% unemployment rate, but fails to mention that it would be more like 10% if millions of Americans hadn’t given up looking for work altogether.
Obama does admit the recovery has been sluggish, but when he isn’t blaming Republicans he says blames the “wrenching financial crises,” saying it inevitably lead to unusually slow growth.
Obama might think that, but a Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta analysis concluded that “U.S. history provides no support” for such a claim.
Even Sorkin, who is clearly trying to help Obama burnish his economic legacy, notes out that Obama’s two biggest legislative achievements — ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank — hurt economic growth. He also pokes Obama for his green energy policies, noting that the heavily subsidized Florida battery factory where Obama recently gave a speech is 100% foreign owned and losing money.
More remarkable is the disdain for the public that Obama unintentionally reveals in the Times piece. Basically, he thinks that people can’t be trusted to form their own opinions about the economy based on their own experiences.
In that sense, Obama is like Chico in the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup, who when caught red handed in a lie said: “Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”