As President Obama gave a speech Friday at Lehigh Carbon Community College in Pennsylvania, the marketing executives at GM should have been furiously taking notes; dangerously misguided our freshman President may be, we must give credit where it is due – he does a hell of a job selling utter garbage to the American people. His celebrity persona has every illusionist in the world green with envy; it’s misdirection in its most effective incarnation, convincing everyone (even those who doubt him) that he has all the answers and that the only way to prosperity is to support his agenda.
His entire recovery plan is like a twisted, Bizzaro-World version of the Cash-for-Clunkers program; loads of cash are thrown away, but instead of getting a shiny new car, we get a clunker of an economy, so ravaged by poor decision making that the slightest drop in unemployment is seen as a godsend. I’m talking, of course, about the .2% drop in unemployment for the month of November, which probably has nothing to do with the Holiday season. Probably.
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2009.