The Question Nobody Wants to Answer

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The Patriot Post:

 

The Question Nobody Wants to Answer

 

By Jonah Goldberg · September 5, 2012

 

You have to feel a little sorry for Team Obama as they squirm to explain why the question "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" is so unfair.

After all, there is only one way to answer it and retain any credibility. Which is why Maryland's Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley, when asked, responded, No, we're not. Within 24 hours, he reversed himself, by all accounts because the Obama campaign forced him to. I haven't checked the video to see if he was blinking T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code as he did so.

The idea that presidents "run" the economy is both ludicrous and fairly novel. Before the New Deal (which in my opinion prolonged the Great Depression), the notion that presidents should or could grow the economy was outlandish. But, as the historian H.W. Brands has argued, it was JFK who really cemented the idea that the president is the project manager for a team of technicians who create economic prosperity. "Most of the problems ... that we now face, are technical problems, are administrative problems," he explained, and should be kept as far away from partisan politics as possible.

President Obama, a hybrid reincarnation of

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