Cal Thomas‘ latest column contends that President Obama is hoping voters will forget in the coming year much of what he said on the campaign trail in 2008.
In his latest in a series of interviews on “60 Minutes” last Sunday night, the president took positions directly opposite those he was espousing as recently as last spring. In his interview with Steve Kroft, the president said he always believed that reversing the culture in Washington “was gonna take more than one term.” It’s a “long-term project,” he said, “not a short-term project.” And then he claimed that during the 2008 campaign, he “didn’t overpromise.”
Really? Speaking in Richmond, Va., on Oct. 22, 2008, Obama promised to put millions of Americans back to work; he pledged “real change.” Instead, the unemployment rate is 8.6 percent. Or is it? Ed Luce of the Financial Times writes, “According to government statistics, if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent.” Washington remains unchanged, as dysfunctional and gridlocked as ever.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nation has lost 1.9 million jobs since Obama took office. As Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler put it, “Obama is on track to have the worst jobs record of any president in the modern era” if things don’t turn around quickly.
In 2009, the president said on the “Today” show, “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.” A few days later in Florida, there was this, “I’m not going to make any excuses,” said Obama. “If stuff hasn’t worked and people don’t feel like I’ve led the country in the right direction, then you’ll have a new president.”