Obamateurism of the Day

I got this National Journal catch from a couple of e-mailers, but I’m not sure it qualifies.  NJ posted this as “Obama’s Oops: President Confuses Texas and Kansas,” but the subhed asks, “Or Was It A Joke?” This comes near the beginning of Barack Obama’s economic speech in Texas Kansas, and to be honest, I’m not sure if he was joking or not:

Well, it is great to be back in the state of Tex — (laughter) — state of Kansas. I was giving Bill Self a hard time, he was here a while back.

I’m guessing that this was intentional, although I’m not sure what his joking with Kansas Jayhawk basketball coach Bill Self has to do with Texas.  The President mugged a little too obviously for this to be a gaffe, but your mileage may vary.

But even if this isn’t an Obamateurism, the economic speech that followed qualified, especially the declaration at the heart of Obama’s argument on “fairness”:

“Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1 percent — 1 percent. That is the height of unfairness.”

I’ll let the WaPo’s Glenn Kessler explain where Obama got this nugget of information:

This is a striking statistic. But the only evidence that the White House could offer for it was a clip of a conversation on Bloomberg TV, in which correspondent Gigi Stone made this assertion during a discussion about the tax strategies that the very wealthy use to avoid paying taxes.  The TV clip was promoted by the left-leaning Web site Think Progress.

Stone quoted from a Bloomberg News article last month that reported on such tax strategies, which mostly involve complicated ways to defer paying capital gains taxes. But the article never made the 1-percent claim. …

The most recent data that we can find on the top 400 taxpayers — all billionaires — show that in 2008, 30 billionaires paid an average tax rate of between zero and 10 percent. Certainly “some” might have paid as little as 1 percent on income. But we are talking about a very tiny number. By contrast, 59 billionaires paid an average tax rate of 30 to 35 percent.  And 238 faced a marginal tax rate of 35 percent and above; only 17 had a marginal rate of zero to 26 percent. …

To bolster his case about unfairness, the president is also relying on a suspect statistic about billionaires paying as little as 1 percent in taxes. Even if true, it is a clearly a rare event. Moreover, it is certainly surprising that the White House would rely on such a dubious, unverified source for a major presidential address.

It’s not surprising to anyone who’s been reading this feature for the last three years or so.

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!