Early warning signs were plentiful. But apparently people read something else into even Obama’s bluntest confessions of faith. For example, Obama’s memorable explanation of his fiscal philosophy to the man dubbed Joe the Plumber: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

What should we have inferred from those words? Probably not what came to pass. He probably didn’t mean that, four years later, poverty would be “spreading at record levels across many groups from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor,” as Newsday recently reported. Or that, “More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out.”

Surely he didn’t mean that. Or did he?

Then again, he warned us early that, “We cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything is going to be OK.”

Those were words we could have bet the farm on.