Barack Obama’s speech on Monday failed to answer any questions about America’s economic leadership … but it did manage to raise a few.  The always sharp-eyed Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times Top of the Ticket blog spotted a glaring inconsistency that even a rookie speechwriter should have spotted before the boss hit the podium.  I’ll let Andrew take it from here:

Trouble is, real leadership is more than talking and calling for things. It takes a while, but over time listeners begin to notice rote rhetoric, predictable patterns, empty words. An example:

We didn’t need a rating agency to tell us that we need a balanced, long-term approach to deficit reduction. That was true last week. That was true last year. That was true the day I took office.

The day Obama took office, 931 of them ago. Subsequently, in his Monday remarks the president said this:

I intend to present my own recommendations over the coming weeks on how we should proceed.

Over the coming weeks? The need for a balanced, long-term approach was clear the day he took office $3+ trillion dollars ago and sometime soon he’ll share his plans?

Obama is still saying, ‘Yes, we can.’ But he never explains why we haven’t.

On the plus side, he’s really improved … his golf game.

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.

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