Autocrats Gotta Know Their Limitations, Too

By David Limbaugh (Archive) · Friday, August 19, 2011

Why aren't more people offended by the autocrat President Obama for always telling people what to do on economic matters when he obviously has no idea what he's doing?

I might have used the term "dictator" or "tyrant," but seeing as Obama is telling carmakers what kind of cars they should make, "autocrat" is especially fitting.

You can't make this up. He told carmakers that they should concentrate on building smaller and more fuel-efficient automobiles. He said: "You can't just make money on SUVs and trucks. There is a place for SUVs and trucks, but as gas prices keep on going up, you have got to understand the market."

That's right. That's exactly what he said, unless my sources misreported the beleaguered chief executive. With no experience in business and with no appreciation for how markets work, he's telling businessmen they need to understand the market.

Anyone who understood the market wouldn't suggest that suppliers start making product they have no reason to believe would be sold. Anyone who understood the market would know that a private-sector manufacturer's fiat works no better than a president's to stimulate demand, unless, perhaps, there were a monopoly environment and manufacturers could collude to produce only the product that they wanted to sell, and even then it would be highly unlikely.

But this is nothing new for Obama, who once convened a group of businessmen to tell them they had to start hiring more people, as if the decision to hire more people were solely a function of an employer's will rather than involving a cost benefit analysis -- and as if their hiring more people would jump-start the economy.

Then there was the time he said that under his then proposed health care plan (he never actually had his own concrete plan), waste would be greatly reduced because he would get doctors together to discuss their procedures and ensure there wasn't duplication of tests and services.

This is truly breathtaking stuff, folks. High-school students should know better than to make such statements. I'd be embarrassed for Obama except that the liberal media never call him out on such ludicrous assertions and thus the poor fellow apparently doesn't even realize he has become a parody of himself.

This is unnerving. How can someone have made it this far in life with such fundamental cluelessness? Has everyone only told him "yes" the past few decades, or was he too arrogant to listen to dissenting answers?

Was it Socrates or "Dirty" Harry Callahan who said, "A man's gotta know his limitations"?

Well, Harry learned that lesson from life experiences -- experiences that we must assume Obama missed. From what we know of his scandalously sketchy background and what we observe of his behavior in office, it would seem that Obama had no life experiences following adolescence other than academics and politics in their various forms. He appears to have no idea why things don't happen automatically as they did on the professors' chalkboards.

As an academically indoctrinated central planner whose tutors trained him to believe the government can create economic growth by using borrowed federal money to pay people to dig ditches and fill them back up again, it's no wonder he is mystified that his stimulus package didn't create jobs.

But he's more than mystified. He's frustrated, because he believes he ought to have carte blanche authority -- akin to that of the econ professor to create widgets with the snap of a finger -- to inaugurate round two, with the building of high-speed rail, more infrastructure and anything else he darn well pleases.

I trust you know I'm not fabricating this. Just the other day, he repeated his lament that he has to work within this messy system called "democracy." He believes that if he just had sole control, he could match in the real world the economic results the professors produced in the classroom.

Meanwhile, Obama is conducting his government-subsidized campaign bus tour as if everything were just wonderful, except for the refusal of American businesses to do as he says.

But there is a silver lining. Though Obama doesn't have the humility or wisdom to know what he doesn't know, the American people are fed up to the point that the liberal media's shameless covering for him is no longer working.

The latest Gallup poll shows that only 26 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the economy and that a whopping 71 percent disapprove. Even fewer, 24 percent, approve of his job creating performance. If a Republican president were in office, there would be wall-to-wall coverage on this.

Oh, how we must pray and work our tails off to ensure that this national nightmare will come to an end in 2012 and that we can then begin, in earnest and with humility, the arduous process of restoring America's financial stability.

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