You’re the President of the United States that ran the first trillion-dollar budget deficits in American history — and did it all three of your years in office. You’ve demanded two unpopular debt-ceiling increases, including one in the last couple of weeks. You earn millions from the sale of your books and $400,000 a year in salary. What about all of this makes Barack Obama think that joking about whether his credit card works somehow endears the common folk to him?

Our good friend John Hayward, who wrote at Hot Air as Doc Zero until landing at Human Events, couldn’t believe his ears:

As he and his army of photographers and Secret Service agents kept an army of regular shoppers stewing just-off camera, the President wondered aloud if his credit card still worked.

Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of CBS News, I give you the signature American moment of 2011.  We’re all wondering if the credit cards still work.  Uncle Sam and his favorite nephew Barack have been racking up an awful lot of charges lately, while the Federal Reserve uses other credit cards to pay the monthly bills.  Nobody wonders if the next charge will go through until the latest load of goodies is rolling past the register.

John wonders what Obama was doing at a Best Buy in the first place:

Incidentally, would anyone have been even slightly troubled if the President – whose endless vacations and opulent lifestyle would embarrass the crowned monarchs of old – had dispatched aides to efficiently and anonymously purchase his Christmas gifts, without causing undue difficulty for the ordinary citizens of Virginia?  When the perks of his office make perfect sense to even the most flinty-eyed federal spending hawk, he doesn’t use them.  We really needed a million photos of Barack pretending to be a regular guy and schlepping through a Best Buy to pick up something family-friendly he and the girls could play on the Wii, just to prove the wheels of American retail commerce are still turning, didn’t we?

Look on the bright side.  I’m pretty sure Obama provided material for at least a few GOP commercials.

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!