The U.S. economy is gorgeous, Obama insists. And the American people would appreciate this “if we had been able to more effectively communicate all the steps we had taken” to improve it, he recently told one news outlet.
“It is very hard to get good stories placed” about the economy, Obama whined to college journalists last week.
“People will assign you stories about what’s not working. It’s very hard for you to write a story about, ‘Wow, this thing really works good.’”
That grammatical gaffe aside, a failure to communicate is not among Obama’s myriad weaknesses.
As his self-confident and hilarious appearance at Saturday’s White House Correspondent’s Dinner confirmed, Obama is a gifted speaker. The national media have eaten out of his hand since he descended from the heavens, fully formed, at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
As president, he can summon two dozen TV cameras and just as many microphones just by crawling out of bed every morning. So, the notion that Obama cannot express his economic message “good” deeply insults the intelligence of the American people.
While Obama can talk the bark off a banyan tree, he cannot make Americans hallucinate prosperity.
Here is the sad picture they actually see:
- Annualized GDP growth nearly stalled in the first quarter at a meager 0.5 percent. This is down from already tepid 1.4 percent growth in 4Q 2015.
- Obama is the only U.S. chief executivein history not to preside over even one year with 3 percent GDP growth, as the Institute for Policy Innovation’s Tom Giovanetti observes.
- “From 1790 to 2000, U.S. real GDP growth averaged 3.79 percent,” entrepreneur Louis Woodhill explained at Real Clear Markets. He expects final figures to show that “2015 will have been the tenth year in a row that real GDP growth came in at under 3.0 percent.”
- The unemployment rate has improved significantly, from 7.8 percent at Obama’s January 20, 2009 inauguration to 5.0 percent in March.
- However, as more and more Americans stop looking for work, the Labor Force Participation Rate on Obama’s watch is down 4.1 percent.
- During the Obama years, the number of Americans below the poverty line is up 3.5 percent.
- Real median household income: Down 2.3 percent.
- Americans on Food Stamps — 33 million then, 46 million now: Up 39.5 percent.
- Americans who own homes: Down 5.6 percent.
- National debt — $10.63 trillion then v. $19.17 trillion last Tuesday: Up 80.3 percent.
- Meanwhile, millions of college-educated millennials are languishing in their parents’ homes and wallowing in student debt, with few prospects.
- Insurance companies are fleeing Obamacare exchanges. Amid $650 million in expected losses this year, UnitedHealth announced that it would medevac out of all but “a handful” of its 34 state markets.
- The percentage of families in which no one is employed has grown from 17.8 in 2008 to 19.7 in 2015, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
As The Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger noted, even the Clintons acknowledge Obama’s economic wreckage.
Americans are suffering “the awful legacy of the last eight years,” Bill Clinton said in March. He explained on April 26, “The problem is, 80 percent of the American people are still living on what they were living on the day before the crash [of 2008].
"And about half the American people, after you adjust for inflation, are living on what they were living on the last day I was president, 15 years ago. So that’s what’s the matter.”
Stumping in New Haven, Connecticut, Hillary Clinton spoke about a nurse who is facing breast cancer and foreclosure.
“And she is speaking for so many people across our country who feel beaten down, left out and left behind,” Hillary said.
“People who have worked hard and done their part, but just can’t seem to get ahead, and find it tough even to get by.”
In Obama’s eighth year, Americans remain in pain. The best thing he can do is apologize, stop talking, and leave us alone until Jan. 20, 2017.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a contributing editor with National Review Online. He is also a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.