We recently learned that during the Obama presidency — which hasn’t even reached its third year — America has increased its debt by $4 trillion. That is to say, Obama has achieved in two-and-a-half years what it took George W. Bush two full terms in office to achieve. All of which makes this clip particularly delicious.

On July 3, 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama said this:

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents — #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.

How typical of Obama. He couldn’t simply express his policy disagreements with President Bush; he had to add his characteristic slander (Bush’s actions were “unpatriotic.”) Back in those days, before Obama carried the burdens of governing, it all seemed so simple. And now, two-and-a-half years into his presidency, Obama has made virtually everything he has touched worse. He turns out to be a man of uncommon incompetence.

I would add among the many differences between Bush and Obama is the former made a very serious run at entitlement reform (Social Security) while the latter put us on an unprecedented spending spree, including a hugely expensive (and injurious) entitlement program, the Affordable Care Act.

As Ed Morrissey puts it, “if Obama can use the increase in the national debt to question Bush’s patriotism, doesn’t it follow that increasing deficit spending by 152 percent per month makes Obama 152 percent more  ‘unpatriotic’ than Bush?”

I guess it does.