Mourning In America

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Responsibility: The president admits that Americans are not better off than they were four years ago — a fact he can hardly deny. But he steadfastly refuses to own up and take blame for his policy failures.

It was more than three decades ago, but the Great Communicator's simple, potent question still echoes today. Over the weekend, ex-Bill Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos of ABC News posed President Obama with the question Ronald Reagan asked Americans in 1980:

"Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

"Well, I don't think they're better off than they were four years ago," the president responded.

Amen to that. In October 2007, the unemployment rate was holding at 4.7% and 7.2 million Americans were out of work.

Today — roughly a year and a half after the administration touted its "Recovery Summer" — unemployment is 9.1% and more than 14 million are without work.

The president, with an eye on November 2012, followed up his response by setting out to make a silk purse from the sow's ear that is the Obama economy.

"I think that what we've seen is that we've been able to make steady progress to stabilize the economy," Obama contended, saying it is "so critical for us to make sure that we are taking every action we can take to put people back to work."

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The president, in fact, is not taking every action he can take to put people back to work. A leader focused on results — rather than appeasing the Democratic Party's liberal base — would recognize by now that stimulus spending and selective, jump-through-the-hoops tax relief have failed.