Hope and Fail

President forgets date of last recession

Speaking in Tampa, Fla., President Obama rolled out his old “we inherited” the economic problems when we took office line. This time, he tried to put it into historical perspective:

In the last two years, we’ve gone through the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Think about that. A big chunk of the people here — certainly the younger people here — have never even seen a recession; they don’t even — it doesn’t register on their minds. This is by far the toughest thing that the country has gone through economically since the 1930s.

There’s no exact data on the age of the crowd to which the president was speaking, but the video from the event shows a packed gym of adults — who surely remember the year 2001 — when the last recession occurred.

Just as a reminder, the 2001 recession began in March of that year and lasted until November. Ending the longest period of economic expansion in the U.S. on record (but who’s really keeping track of the beginnings and endings of recessions?).

But, you know, a “big chunk” of people didn’t see it, according to President Obama. Even if the crowd was composed entirely of people who just reached voting age, 18, that would put them at 9-years-old during the last recession. So maybe they missed it. After all, 2001 was a forgettable year … oh wait.

The next time the president addresses national security, will he suggest that a “big chunk” of people in the audience “have never even seen” a terrorist attack?