First let me say that any business editor who uses the word “awesome” to describe a financial chart with GDP numbers and stock market returns sorted by presidency ought to be banished to the 1990s, constrained to a geographic area, like, not to exceed the political boundaries of the San Fernando Valley.
At the very least he should be forced to take a starter course in Microsoft Excel- for all eternity.
Awesome should be reserved for things that are, well, awesome: the face of God, the initial bombing campaign against Saddam Hussein, the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series.
The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson, the awesome senior business editor extraordinaire- as long as we are using clichés, let’s go for it- makes the case in The Obama Record: It Was the Best of Terms, It Was the Worst of Terms that economically Obama matches up with the best of presidents because the stock market has gone from 6,000 to 13,000 while he was in the Oval Office.
And, yes, Thompson uses the word "awesome." He also uses other overwrought words and phrases like when he describes Obama’s economic record as “bi-polar”- meaning “good”- and he asserts that “energy and multinational companies have led a stock boom that rivals the Dot-Com bubble.”
Boy, and here I didn’t know the Dot Com bubble was such a great thing.
After reading Thompson’s exclamation points to Obama (!!!), I wonder, first of all, how Thompson didn’t hyperventilate while writing it. You can almost feel Chris Matthews’ Obama-induced chill run up Thompson’s leg as he penned this love letter.
The market, ahem, was at 9,300 when Obama was elected. It was at 8,600 the week he was inaugurated and reached prices we hadn’t seen since 1996 under Obama. And it still hasn’t reached the Bush-era high of 14,000 if that’s the measure of a president. Which it isn’t.
Getting past the fallacy of the stock market “boom”- the current S&P P/E ratio is 23.62 versus its high of 44.20 before the Dot Com boom went bust- using stock market returns as a bolster for Obama’s candidacy is the economic equivalent of Obama heading down to Cushman, OK and saying “Drill, baby, drill,” just as he did last week.
Politically, the left, as represented by Thompson, Obama, Ezra Klein, et al. isn’t just wrong, they are in the process of declaring moral bankruptcy, just as I said last week during Obama’s Keystone photo-op.
“I cannot speak for the thousands of people around the world who marched under two nines [the 99%] on a piece of paper,” wrote Thompson about Occupy Wall Street in October, “but to me, they stand for simple ideas. We are the common ones. We speak for many. Our needs are average. They have not been met.”
Gosh I almost shed a tear for Thompson’s unmet, average needs.
But forget about all that, because today Thompson wants you to know, “Hey, kids: All is well. Things are great on Wall Street!”
Again, that’s like Obama standing in front of a camera and taking credit for oil production going up to the highest level in eight years.
What else can you do when you’ve done nothing and it hasn’t worked?
You can either tell the truth or you can lie.
Guess which liberals are picking?
Here’s more hilarity by possibly the dumbest business writer the left has to offer:
“Obama went to Washington to heal partisanship and pass health care reform,” writes Thompson “and he wound up becoming a financial crisis manager stuck with balancing job creation and deficit reduction in a time of hyper-partisanship and a moribund private sector.”
I almost hyperventilated from laughing when I read that.
Obama, the post-partisan healer? Obama, the financial manager who can’t pass a budget- even under his own party? Obama, the job creator who creates no jobs? Obama, the deficit fighter who adds to the deficit?
I’ve heard many deplore the state of the GOP primary process, but they are paying attention to the wrong party nomination.
Since Obama took the historic butt-kicking in the 2010 mid-term elections and he has been deprived of his party to back him up, he’s been shown to be a piranha with no teeth: small fish, big pond. Make no mistake, Obama's in for another historic butt-kicking from conservatives.
He’s gone from “I killed Osama bin Laden,” to “Tax the Rich,” to “Occupy Wall Street” back to “Tax the Richest, only,” to “It’s about women’s health!” and now his partisans are trying to sell him as the Wall Streetest, oil producingest president this side of George W. Bush.
The truth is that while the mainstream media cabal treats each iteration of Obama version 2-point-whatever as a brilliant political ploy, each iteration only fills Americans with more misgivings about him. If that weren’t the case we wouldn’t see Obama continually trying to reinvent himself every three months.
Thompson is right about this: The Obama presidency is bi-polar.
And it’s time for people to recognize that bi-polar isn’t a benefit; it’s a disease.
PS- For some more hilarious central economic planning from Thompson, check out his take on gas prices.
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