While an AA+ grade might sound good to a schoolkid, it’s not the rating we want for our federal credit. But it’s the rating we have now from Standard & Poor’s. National Review‘s Rich Lowry places the blame at the top of the presidential administration, explaining in a new column that “he’s an AA+ president of an AAA country.”

Financial crises like that of 2008 always create vast overhangs of debt, but Obama believed he should heedlessly add more. And he’s never once “pivoted” to responsibility.

In February, six months before the downgrade, Obama offered a budget that increased spending and the debt. After ten years, the deficit still would have been more than $1 trillion. In April, four months before the downgrade, Obama delivered a gimmicky budget speech with no specifics. On April 11, just seven days before S&P assigned a negative outlook to our AAA rating, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the president wanted a debt-ceiling increase with no deficit reduction whatsoever.

Now that the downgrade is upon us, the administration is lashing out. It reeks of desperation and blame-shifting, but, hey, this is the way the game is played down at AA+.