Would a President Bill Clinton have been incapable of saying yes to the Keystone Pipeline?

We tire of the narrative foisted upon us by the Media faction of the Democratic Party that suggests signs of an uptick in economic activity, and especially jobs created, should portend an increase in expected votes for President Barack Obama’s re-election. Weeks ago we tired of the “Bill Clinton convention speech saved Obama” narrative, which required that voters believe that no president, not even Bill himself, could have “fixed the mess” inherited on January 20, 2009, in “just” four years.

We can’t get back the lost years

One of my businesses is very sensitive to an increase in home loan applications. The combination of the past four years of depressed home prices and The Fed’s recent QE3 is having the natural effect of freeing up more money for banks to lend. But should the first good signs of a possible recovery of the housing market, at this late date, absolve the president of all responsibility for the failure of the market to recover earlier?

From September 13: The Federal Reserve fulfilled expectations of more stimulus for the faltering economy, taking aim now at driving down mortgage rates until an improvement in unemployment that the central bank says will be a problem for several years.

I don’t think so.

Forget, for a moment, the latest depressing signs of an impending double dip recession with GDP at 1.3% last quarter and durable goods down 13% last month, and let’s just grant, for the sake of argument, that we are now on the precipice of a more historically-normal V-shaped recovery. Would that fact affirm the wisdom of Obama’s policies? In a word, no.

The freedom retained by Americans from the founding, despite Obama’s policies, and the creativity and drive still retained by so many would-be entrepreneurs still makes “recoveries” of some sort possible. In fact, Obama and his super-majority of Democrats that controlled Congress for his first two years counted on this historical fact to bail them out with a recovery worthy of the name, despite their anti-business Obamacare, stimulus to facilitate government employee  union dues for Democrat coffers, and attack on energy prices. Sadly for them, and us, the usual sharp recovery after sharp recessions never materialized before today, much less before 2010′s historic GOP midterm landslide.

The suffering by most all Americans, but especially the poor and lower income families, not to mention the unemployed, that have seen prices rise for necessary  food and energy, cannot be recovered, no matter when, or if, a real recovery occurs. Much of the suffering could have been avoided if the newly-inaugurated Obama and Democrats had done nothing. Instead they attacked those that create wealth and jobs based upon their ideology. Then when the recovery never comes, they ramp up the get out the victim-dependent vote strategy and whine that no president could have fixed the mess. They made the mess worse. A re-elected President Obama would actually inherit a worse mess from himself than he did from President Bush.

But even if we were to discover early in 2013 that a jobs-producing recovery commenced in late 2012, it would not mean that Obama deserved re-election. Do we want presidents that are indifferent to economic suffering for most of their term which they can blame on their predecessor, and who only get anxious for the economy to recover just in time for election days? Of course not.

The loss of wealth by so many Americans due to the bursting of the housing bubble in 2007-8 did portend a long period before recovery, but that does not excuse the Democrats’ actions that prolonged the period of jobs recession and anemic growth. That so may Americans don’t give in to the market and a hostile government to eke out an existence that eventually portends recovery should not be good news for Obama.

After all, he didn’t build that

And if he were to authorize the Keystone Pipeline tomorrow after his additional “environmental studies”, he should get no credit for doing right before the election, what he could have and should have done years ago. Men and women could have been earning good wages on that pipeline while paying their own way, rather than joining Food Stamp nation or going on disability.

We the People don’t want the scraps from Obama and Michelle’s table. Get out of our way and let us bail ourselves out even as they and Ben Bernanke continue to bail out their banks.

P.S. We actually bought some Le Sueur peas last week for the first time since the Great Recession began. Its not because we can now afford them. Its because some health matters now make us unable to eat as much meat…

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Editor - Hillbilly Politics

Co-Founder and Editor - Political Daily

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist –  Examiner.com