Obama: ‘…all the choices we’ve made have been the right ones…’

Politicians don’t make mistakes. If you don’t believe me, just ask them. They’ll have serious trouble coming up with examples of anything they’ve done wrong.

In 2004, Democrats howled with laughter and amazement when George W. Bush couldn’t come up with any examples of mistakes he had made since the terrorist attacks in 2001. “Dumb ol’ Bush is making mistakes all over the place, but he won’t admit it,” was the prevailing attitude among Democrats then.

Well, the tables have turned and Republicans are able to howl with laughter at Barack Obama’s blindness about the same issue. After three years in office — and with the economy continuing to fall apart instead of performing as he told us it would based on his “stimulus” spending — Obama is still convinced that he’s made all the right economic choices.

In an interview with ABC News’ Jake Tapper, Obama concedes that the election next year is going to be close because of the economy, but he’s not willing to take any responsibility for having made things worse:

“I guarantee it’s going to be a close election because the economy is not where it wants to be and even though I believe all the choices we’ve made have been the right ones, we’re still going through difficult circumstances. That means people who may be sympathetic to my point of view still kind of feel like, yeah, but it still hasn’t gotten done yet.”

The economy is in the toilet because of decades of mismanagement by politicians from both parties. They share the delusion that economists can accurately measure everything in an infinitely complex system and then tweak it to perform as they want it to perform by pulling knobs and levers, as though the economy were a machine. This is economic alchemy. It’s based on nothing but faith in mathematical models. It’s never been shown to be reliable in the real world, yet politicians and most economists continue to pretend they can turn economic lead into gold.

In his 1988 book, “The Fatal Conceit,” Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek pointed out that there are too many variables in a complex system to be able to control it from the top. The book explained the fallacies of state economic planning:

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

People such as Obama and his advisors mean well, despite the fact that many of their opponents would rather assume malevolence. But they have faith in economic ideas that don’t work and never have worked. It’s odd how so many people will make fun of others’ religious faith when they themselves show a faith that’s just as strong in ideas that are mere economic religion.

State intervention in the economy doesn’t work. It never has worked, whether the intervention is from a Democrat or a Republican. Obama has followed the prescriptions in the Keynesian playbook, so he can’t believe he’s done anything wrong. That’s because he doesn’t understand he’s expecting alchemy to start producing gold.