On the 2011 State of the Union address:
[Obama] continues not to comprehend America's central anxiety about government spending: that it will crush our children, constrict the economy in which they operate, make America poorer, lower its standing in the world, and do in the American dream.
She quotes Senator Coburn:
“… federal government is twice the size it was 10 years ago. It's 27% bigger than it was two years ago."
She makes an astute observation about the man:
There is often about the president an air of delivering a sincere lecture in which he informs us of things that seem new to him but are old to everyone else. He has a tendency to present banalities as if they were discoveries.
She’s right; he reminds me of faculty from other disciplines when they start to recognize how economics works – they start to sound like Thomas Friedman.
When you talk this way, as if the audience is uninformed, they think you are uninformed.
She sums up my feelings exactly:
I actually hate writing this. I wanted to write "A Serious Man Seizes the Center." But he was not serious and he didn't seize the center …
P.S. I think Megan McArdle saw something even worse:
Obama sounds remarkably similar to the CEOs I used to listen to on earnings calls: the ones with mediocre EPS and a failing business model.
P.P.S. I’m reminded of one of the best things I ever heard about Bill Clinton: he doesn’t believe his own bullshit. Obama does.
