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Maynard says:

Obama’s supporters have their answer: “Obama came to office in the wake of an unprecedented catastrophe. It takes time to turn that around. And, look!, it is indeed starting to turn around. Obama has taken us through the worst of it, and we’ll see things getting better and better from now on.”

It’s not impossible that Obama will ride a modest uptick in the economy to a second term.

Obama’s apologists are spinning a pile of trash, but there are some elements of truth. Yes, the problems we have cannot be fixed in a year or two. Yes, even if the president was doing everything perfectly, a solution would take time.

Here are what I see as the primary problems:

First, we got into the mess by running a massive imbalance. Huge national debt; huge trade deficit. Obviously unsustainable.

To save ourselves, we’d need to turn those fundamental factors around. Under Obama, they’ve only gotten worse. If you accept that those fundamental factors were responsible for the original crash, then it follows that we’re racing headlong into the next crash. Doesn’t matter whether unemployment ticks up a bit or ticks down a bit; it’s still a house of cards waiting to collapse.

In 2008, candidate Obama properly lambasted Bush for running up the debt and failing to address our true problems. Then Obama did exactly the same as Bush, only more of it. (It might even be said that this candidate for “change” was in fact more like Bush’s 3rd term.) His first act in office was basically to command that Washington borrow and spend a trillion dollars as fast as possible (and he used executive orders to direct as much as possible to his cronies). That, he said, would hold unemployment below 8%. Didn’t happen. He also pledged to halve the deficit he inherited by the end of his first term. Didn’t happen; the deficit is worse than ever.

The obvious fact is that Obama’s only trick is to borrow and spend. This does not end pleasantly.