Crimson Red Sports

About the only talking point Joe Biden didn’t repeat in his debate with Paul Ryan was the one lionizing President Obama for having saved the country from another Great Depression. Biden used it in his speech at the Democratic convention, as did others, and it remains a hardy perennial of Obama lore. The president, ever immodest, has credited himself for this achievement. Last year Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told him, it’s “your legacy.” Andrew Sullivan, in a recent Newsweek cover story likening Obama to Ronald Reagan, twice credited the president with having “prevented a second Great Depression.”

That the president saved us is an empty boast. The Obama camp cites the stimulus package enacted in February 2009 as evidence for the claim. But on inspection, this proof dissolves. The stimulus wasn’t responsible even for halting the recession, much less keeping America out of a depression. The recession officially ended in June 2009—at a time when only a fraction of the $831 billion in stimulus funds had been spent.

Two more points. “Economists weren’t predicting a Depression,” according to John Merline of Investor’s Business Daily. Obama’s economists, surveying the economy as he entered the White House, didn’t see any indication of one. Nor did the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which predicted the recession would end in the second half of 2009. Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin reminds us that any administration would have proposed an economic stimulus, given conditions in early 2009. Obama’s program wasn’t unique, except in its failure to spark a strong recovery.