According to an old joke, there are three kinds of people in the world: Those who are good at math, and those who aren’t. Apparently Barack Obama is one of the lattermost group.
Speaking to an adoring crowd in Florida, the president spoke proudly of the products sold around the world and “stamped with three proud words, ‘Made in the U.S.A.’” By our calculations that is four words, although “U.S.A.” is just another way of saying “United States of America,” so the president could even be considered off by three words.
This is no big deal, of course, just one of those inconsequential verbal slips that inevitably occur when someone’s job entails talking all day long. Still, the error should be duly noted for four reasons.
One is undeniable truth that it would have been a very big deal indeed if it had been said by any Republican. George W. Bush’s occasional and usually less ridiculous malapropisms were always widely publicized and thoroughly ridiculed, Dan Quayle was forever branded a dunce because of his failure to spot a common misspelling, Sarah Palin was pilloried for saying she could see Russia from her house even though she never said any such thing, and similar examples abound. When Mitt Romney makes some similar misstatement, or even one far less absurd, he can expect it to be endlessly replayed on all the comedy shows as proof of his stupidity, and such double standards should not be endured.
Also, while Obama’s incorrect addition is not necessarily proof of his stupidity, it does further belie his whatever is left of his reputation as the smartest man who ever lived. Some people can’t reminded of this often enough.
What’s more, the arithmetical error might very well be the result of a profound innumeracy on the president’s part. Obama’s critics have charged that the double-counting used to sell Obamacare, the phantom peace dividend used to provide an appearance of budget reduction, and the numerous large gaps between his economic projections and reality have all been proof of his dishonesty, but it may in fact be because he’s just not very good at math.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 