Wait a Minute...

Obama is now saying, both in Primetime Presser Four and during his interview with Ms. Perky that he's saved an economy on the brink of another Great Depression. From the Couric interview:

President Obama: I disagree that the stimulus plan is not working. Think about where we've been. I think people maybe have a selective memory here. It was only four or five months ago that people thought we might go into a Great Depression. We have gone through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

And, since that time, we have stabilized the financial markets. We have created the ability of businesses to borrow again. We have prevented thousands of layoffs in states all across the country. We have made sure that people have extended unemployment insurance.

Well, OK. If the White House admits the stimulus was more of a two year plan with most of the infrastructure jobs coming later (we don't hear 'shovel ready' very much anymore) and if raw economic numbers suggest job creation was inflated in earlier estimates and that the meager tax cuts in the stimulus haven't stimulated much, and that federalizing two car companies and a few banks has also not caused any significant upward swings, then what saved the country from the brink of depression?

Obama suggests it was his stabilization of the financial sector. So he must be talking about TARP, right? Which was a G.W. Bush initiative. The same man he blames for bringing us to the brink.

Everyone knows he set the bar low coming in to get the stimulus passed (which may end up more of a vote buying scheme for the 2010 elections if they don't police it thoroughly) in order to take credit for the eventual business cycle uptick or if the country didn't collapse in three months. So here we are. Politics as usual.