We’re now in the fourth year of the Obama recovery. At least that’s what we’re told. Yet recovery seems to be a little hard to locate. Obama famously said in 2009 that if the economy hasn’t rebounded by the end of his term, he would be a one-term president. For some reason, he’s backpedaling on that comment. What stands out above all else is his penchant for blaming everyone and everything—besides himself, of course—for the moribund state of things. A number of really excellent political cartoons have highlighted this tendency. This one shows the blindness that exists in the current administration:
Either the president can’t understand how he has sabotaged recovery or he is obstinate. Neither option is encouraging. So, in order to deflect criticism of his policies, he’s has to come up with alternate explanations for why we’re still shipwrecked. The explanations sound more like, well, this:
Who’s to blame? Let’s count the scapegoats:
The second one on the list has become his favorite, despite the fact that George Bush has been out of office for nearly four years. It requires some fancy spin to make this one work:
So what does the president offer as a solution to the problem?
That’s either faith or foolishness. I opt for the latter. What’s needed is for the federal government to back off and allow the economic engine to run itself, but the president and his cronies don’t trust the private sector. I mean, someone might actually make a profit, which seems to be their definition of unfairness.
Dilbert isn’t a blatantly political cartoon, but sometimes it points out a problem that has an application to policy. Take this one, for instance:
Yes, there it is.