By most counts, it hasn’t exactly been a spectacular week for Team Obama. Mitt Romney is giving him a formidable run for his money on the campaign trail; poor jobs numbers combined with more bad news from Europe has everybody feeling down; that whole Wisconsin debacle was perhaps a tiny bit embarrassing; and to top it all off, there’s been some very pointed muttering about whether the White House may have intentionally leaked some classified information to the media for a little foreign-policy boost.

President Obama magnanimously appeared before us on Friday morning to explain away these charges, most particularly concerning the economy and Europe, and to exhort Congress to step up their game on passing jobs-related legislation. Europeans, he said, face the challenge of needing to both get their spending under control, while also encouraging growth. The United States has the same problem, and needs to find ways to grow the economy in order to create jobs and wealth and boost revenue. Curiously, the jobs he seemed most concerned about are state-and-local government jobs, including cops, teachers, and firefighters, because apparently, the private sector is doing just fine, or something.

You know, I was in complete agreement with the President as he was saying that it’s much easier to deal with debts and deficits when your economy is growing — but his solutions include the government making more “investments” on Americans behalf, sponsoring infrastructure projects to put the construction industry back to work, “stabilizing the banks” (because that worked so well, cough cough, “too big to fail”), and adding more workers to state-and-local public payrolls. All of which are ideas, he claims, with which most bipartisan economists agree, and if Republicans wanted to “be helpful” and allow the country to “move forward,” they’d get on board.  …The Keynesianism is overwhelming me.

Contrary to what President Obama says, Congress does have ideas to grow the economy — by forcing the government to get out of its own people’s way and allow the private sector to function as it should. Yesterday, for instance, I applauded a bill proposed by Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy that would force the Obama administration to issue more drilling permits on federal land. More energy production is a proven route to prosperity, not more of the same government-stimulus that has had us just meandering along in the longest “recovery” following a recession since WWII.

The President also denied the allegations of his White House releasing sensitive national security information, calling the idea “offensive” and “wrong.” “People need to have a better understanding of how I approach this office and of how the people around me approach this office,” he scolded. Riiiiight.