This weekend, George Will and Peggy Noonan noted a particular recurring thread in Barack Obama’s public statements on the economy, which is that … he doesn’t really understand it much.  Earlier, Obama had bragged about adding 600,000 jobs in three months, which isn’t all that much to brag about, as Will points out in this video:

“What struck me this week is our president is not a great student of American history, as he showed in his uninformed preposterous remarks about Rutherford B. Hayes,” Will said during the online “Green Room” segment of ABC’s “This Week.”

“But leave that aside, if he knew even recent American history he would know better than to come out and brag as he did this week when he said we created 600,000 jobs in three months.”

Will explained that while Ronald Reagan was president, he was able to add that many jobs in a single month, despite having entered office in 1981 in a deeper hole than Obama inherited in 2009.

Remember that it takes a net addition of 125,000 jobs each month just to keep up with population growth. While averaging 212,000 job additions a month for a quarter is better than nothing, it’s not the kind of job growth that’s particularly impressive, especially given the fact that (a) it would take several years at that rate to regain the jobs lost during Obama’s term, and (b) as Will notes, it’s pretty weak tea, historically speaking.

Noonan then explains the entire OOTD series:

But Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan suggested that the president’s “incorrect or ill-thought-through” remarks were tarnishing his professorial reputation.

“Can I tell you something that I think is hurting the president’s reputation right now?” Noonan said.

“He has this reputation — he has for four years now that he has been famous in America as a really smart man. But he has said things lately that are so incorrect or ill-thought-through that people think, ‘He’s really smart. He must be being mischievous. He must be being deliberately provocative.’”

Or, given the consistency of these statements, perhaps it will get some people to reconsider the “he’s really smart” assumption. Perhaps even the media might give up on that meme at some point.

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!