IBD Editorials

Leadership: As the economy flatlines and stocks crater, the Pied Piper of hope and change leads us over a cliff while blowing out birthday candles at the White House and snuffing out America’s future.

This administration has been so wretched, its performance so incompetent, that we half-expect to see billboards popping up with the image of Jimmy Carter and the words, “Miss me yet?”

At least Carter, who with any luck will be supplanted in 2013 as America’s worst former president, used appropriate symbolism in donning sweaters, sitting in front of fireplaces and complaining of America’s “malaise.” His birthdays, we recall, were relatively quiet affairs.

No sackcloth and ashes, however, for the incumbent. As Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times reported, President Obama celebrated his 50th birthday Thursday night with a celebrity-filled bash. As entertainer Chris Rock reported on his Twitter feed:

“Just left the president’s birthday party at the White House. Herbie Hancock played, Stevie Wonder sang and, yes, they did the electric slide. A great night.”

For the American people, it was a sleepless night, prefaced by the administration’s press secretary Jay Carney declaring that “the White House doesn’t create jobs.” No, it just destroys them through regulations and policies that promote unionism while discouraging domestic energy production.

To cite just one example, Boeing wants to create a thousand jobs in a right-to-work state and Obama turns the dogs of the National Labor Relations Board loose on the company.

According to reports, birthday revelers in addition to Rock included rapper Jay Z, Tom Hanks, basketball legends Charles Barkley and Grant Hill, Whoopi Goldberg, Dallas Cowboys great Emmitt Smith and actor Hill Harper, one of the president’s closest chums from Harvard law school and star of “CSI: NY.” No word about the taxes on the private jets they flew in on.

It was the president’s fifth birthday party to that point. Earlier in the day he was toasted in the Blue Room by White House aides as well as family and friends. The day before, he celebrated in his hometown of Chicago, with three different campaign fundraising events. For a mere $38,500 you could actually sit close enough to have an audience.

The latest jobless numbers showed just 117,000 jobs were created in July, a number that — like this year’s GDP data — probably will be revised downward. Official unemployment, not including job seekers who have just given up, stands at 9.1%. The participation rate, which measures the percentage of people working or searching for jobs, fell to 63.9%, the lowest in 27 years.

This weekend, the president was off to Camp David for more celebrating. But fear not: Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, head of the Democratic National Committee, assures us the economy has turned the corner.

Happy birthday, Mr. President.