For a former college lecturer and supposed Constitutional scholar, Barack Obama has a powerful allergy to actual research. This time, he exposes his ignorance of history on the pages of the Smithsonian Magazine, a prestigious platform on American history and culture. Obama pronounces himself optimistic that we can solve our tough problems by coming together as a nation. Why, just look what the government can do to create new technologies when it musters its resources, Obama argues, and uses the Erie Canal as an example:

That we have constantly transformed ourselves is a testament to our people—our entrepreneurs and innovators, scientists and engineers, dreamers, tinkerers and makers of things. It is also a testament to our times. For thousands of years, people on every continent lived much the same way their parents and grandparents lived. But over the past few centuries, the pace of change has steadily picked up, and today new technologies and innovations are coming faster than ever, replacing the ones that preceded them.

Much of the innovation reshaping our world comes from the private sector. Rightly so. Our businesses have always been a force for dynamism. But there is also a role for government in helping us adapt to—and shape—the future. From the Erie Canal to space exploration to what became the Internet, we’ve always come together to spur transformation. That is a commitment my administration has upheld. Over the past year, we’ve made the largest investment in basic research funding in history; it’s an investment with the potential to spark new technologies, new treatments and new breakthroughs we can’t foresee.

Tying the Erie Canal to the space program and the Internet implies that the federal government created all three. However, as Brent Bannor pointed out to me, that’s not the case. In fact, the federal government refused to get involved in building the Erie Canal and left it to the State of New York to handle it on their own — and they did:

“At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Allegheny Mountains were the Western Frontier. The Northwest Territories that would later become Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio were rich in timber, minerals, and fertile land for farming. It took weeks to reach these precious resources. Travelers were faced with rutted turnpike roads that baked to hardness in the summer sun. In the winter, the roads dissolved in a sea of mud.

“Then – New York Governor DeWitt Clinton envisioned a better way: a Canal from Buffalo on the eastern shore of Lake Erie to Albany on the upper Hudson River, a distance of almost 400 miles.

“’The city will, in the course of time, become the granary of the world, the emporium of commerce, the seat of manufactures, the focus of great moneyed operations,’ said Clinton. ‘And before the revolution of a century, the whole island of Manhattan, covered with inhabitants and replenished with a dense population, will constitute one vast city.’

“In 1817, Clinton convinced the State legislature to authorize $7 million for construction of a Canal 363 miles long, 40 feet wide and four feet deep.

“In 1825, Governor Dewitt Clinton officially opened the Erie Canal as he sailed the packet boat Seneca Chief along the Canal from Buffalo to Albany. After traveling from the mouth of the Erie to New York City, he emptied two casks of water from Lake Erie into the Atlantic Ocean, celebrating the first connection of waters from East to West in the ceremonial ‘Marriage of the Waters’.” (David Currie, The Constitution in Congress: The Jeffersonians)

And why didn’t Washington fund this project and run it at the federal level? Congress decided it had neither the jurisdiction nor the money to spend on it (page 1078):

“Professing to find both the Erie Canal and its perennial cousin connecting the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays deserving of federal patronage, a House committee unaccountably concluded that ‘the inauspicious situation… in regard to our foreign relations,’ combined with the parlous state of the Treasury, made it ‘inexpedient’ to support them with land any more than with money, and New York was left to open the West on its own.”

So what are the real lessons of the Erie Canal? First, technological solutions don’t always require a federal program. Second, government works better when it’s closer to the problem rather than farther away. Third, even when Congress doesn’t spend money it doesn’t have on issues outside of its jurisdiction, people find ways to make things work.

And let’s not miss the fact that Obama more or less admits this in this excerpt — because the pace of change steadily increasing over the past few centuries had nothing to do with Congress spending taxpayer money on pork-barrel projects. That came from private markets producing innovation to meet new demands. Government’s proper role in that process is to enforce property rights and prosecute fraud and theft, and otherwise get out of the way to let people succeed.

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at [email protected] with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!