Let’s just have a few meditations on the economy today, and how it’s affecting the race for the presidency. What better way to accomplish this than to allow the cartoonists to carry the meditation? I know most of what I write about is national, but we can start with one state’s economy:

Of course, if that happens, the rest of the country will be affected also. Did you hear that California governor Jerry Brown just announced that the state debt is far worse than he anticipated? Gee, I wonder if his policies might have something to do with that? Why is it that we think we’re immune to an economic Armageddon?

This mentality can be found at the top as well:

One of my concerns is that a slightly lower unemployment rate will fool voters into thinking things are turning around. Anyone thinking that way is overlooking one significant factor:

In other words, the number of people looking for jobs keeps dropping because they’ve given up. A shrinking unemployment rate masks a shrinking labor force. That’s not progress. All it does is put more citizens on the government dole. Remember Julia?

How widespread is that outlook on life? The more it becomes the norm, the closer we are to utter collapse. Yet the Obama campaign continues to make job creators into villains. That’s bad enough, but the hypocrisy of it only adds to the reprehensible nature of the attack:

Keep in mind the president himself is also part of the so-called 1%. He’s not exactly suffering.

I wrote a post a few days ago about the Obama campaign’s new slogan, “Forward.” It’s so ripe for parody, it’s almost too easy to do. Examples abound, many with the same theme:

What were they thinking by promoting this slogan? The cartoonist Michael Ramirez may have figured it out:

Obamacare is nowhere to be found in any current Obama ads. Wonder why? What does he have that he can tout? Well, one thing:

Maybe you can get the T-shirt:

I realize some have criticized the president for overplaying his hand in this matter. Well, to be honest, I have criticized the president for putting himself front and center and seemingly taking all credit. Perception is the key in campaigns. Perhaps we’ll be seeing this soon:

Try not to get too ill before election day.

I can never run out of things to say about President Obama’s economic policies. He just keeps providing more to talk about. Take, for instance, his promotion of the so-called Buffett Rule lately, the one that thought it was a good idea to tax the rich more [as if that would have actually made a dent in the deficit]:

Apparently, Congress wasn’t as convinced. It went down to defeat in the Senate. It was never a serious proposal for deficit reduction; it served a political goal only.

Now the Obama campaign team is out with a seven-minute video touting his economic successes. I’m not sure how they found seven minutes worth of footage, but when you’re disconnected from reality anyway, it’s no problem:

Overall, one has to wonder what he really can show for all the record-high levels of spending:

That’s a pretty good representation of his “record.” Think it will play?

The class warfare rhetoric is getting thick. I find this rather amusing considering the president himself is part of that oft-maligned 1%. It appears his campaign team has decided the best chance he has for reelection is to play the envy card. I’m sure, though, it will be conjoined with the race card later, as well as any other “card” they can find to exacerbate divisions within the citizenry.

Since I’m a historian, I’m always interested in the antecedents to current policies. What were the precursors that have led to fanning the flames of hatred of the rich? One cartoonist has come up with a possibility:

I’m not going to vouch for the historical accuracy of that one, but if the slash-and-burn technique becomes dominant real soon, maybe I’ll give it some credence.

Our economic mess is a combination of radical Leftist ideology and just plain incompetence. In fact, the two go together rather well:

So in case the president may be wondering, there may be good reasons why the business community is not uniformly on his side:

May enlightenment come to the majority of the electorate by November.

Image vs. reality. Which is more pivotal in presidential elections? Candidates want to project a certain image. Those who are not in office usually hold out a utopian vision of what life will be like once they are elected—hope and change, anyone? After they are in office, and things haven’t gone the way they had promised, the trick is to deflect attention from the reality by any means possible. This is where a money advantage enters when it comes to flooding the airwaves with the desired image. It happens on both sides. Romney was able to swamp his competitors in the primaries with an onslaught of ads undermining the opposition. Obama’s people are hoping for a “billion-dollar” war chest. This can lead to cynicism.

Obama’s campaign is already shaping the image by painting Republicans as heartless, miserly, and greedy. Any plan that is offered to get us out of our massive debt and sluggish economy is immediately attacked as another attempt to push grandma over the cliff. The key is to deflect attention away from the absence of any real solution by Obama himself.

Another component of the strategy is emerging: hit those rich people. Make them pay more. The image projected is that Obama is the protector of the little guy, and he’s going to sock it to the cruel owners of wealth who are undoubtedly getting wealthy by stealing it from you. Never mind the facts, that the government could take away all the money and property from the richest 1% and the debt would barely be dented. That’s not the issue; image is everything.

And please don’t notice the reality that impinges on all of us:

No, there’s no train wreck here. Nothing to see, folks. Go your merry way and give us four more years.

If we do that, the train wreck visual will be an understatement.

I don’t adhere to the philosophy that government is evil. Rather, I believe it is established by God to accomplish justice. As stated in the book of Romans in the New Testament, it should protect those who do good and punish those who do evil. When government stays within its God-ordained role, it is honorable and necessary.

But when government steps outside those boundaries, it creates unceasing mischief. When Reagan took office, in his first inaugural address, he famously noted that in the circumstances he faced at that time, government was not the solution but the problem.

That’s where we are again.

Ever since Reagan left office, we’ve allowed a steady drift toward government solutions for everything. That drift has escalated into a race during the Obama years. Here are a couple of government “solutions” we now have to deal with:

Isn’t it just grand that we no longer have a choice for the type of light bulb we want to buy? And these new, supposedly highly efficient, “green” bulbs, if they should ever break, are more of an environmental hazard than anything produced by private industry in the past 150 years. Note also the official name of Obamacare: the Affordable Care Act. See the price tag? Let’s see now, what were we promised at the beginning?

The scariest thing is that there were people who actually believed that. The costs of the act were generally put off until after the 2012 election, and the desirable features came first, but the hard reality will soon hit everyone.

Remarkably, despite the best efforts of the Obama administration to kill the economy, it still shows signs of life. Wherever the free market can see cracks in the stifling government net of regulation, it will insert itself and continue to prosper. But will voters really understand the nature of any recovery that we see? You can be sure the president will try to spin any sign of economic life to his advantage:

Will the electorate buy into the big lie again?

The Obama presidency has given the country a new perspective on how the economy works. He’s made it kind of a game. It’s just taking us a while to get used to the new rules:

Perhaps we just need to give him more time to show that his policies will work eventually. After all, what can be accomplished in a mere four years?

Meanwhile, the Great Uniter is back where he’s most comfortable, on the campaign trail, bringing the country together behind his positive vision for the future—unlike those evil Republicans who are always dividing us:

His rhetoric and his actions are in constant conflict. Think enough people will notice in time?