Obama Devoting Himself to Re-building US Economy .... maybe

In his September 10th speech to the nation about the crisis in Syria, Obama made an interesting remark as an aside: "And I know Americans want all of us in Washington -- especially me -- to concentrate on the task of building our nation here at home: putting people back to work, educating our kids, growing our middle class." 

If Obama understands that and, more importantly, actually believes it, then it's reasonable to assume his actions should match up with his words - or - is it just more political posturing and a load of BS on the part of Obama ? 

Based upon Obama's past behavior any reasonable person believing that "tigers don't change their stripes" could be excused for intuitively concluding it's more of the latter than the former. 

And now there's actually some data to back up that conclusion. 

A non-partisan group, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) concluded that up until March 31st of this year Obama had spent about 474 hours in economic meetings.

In other words Obama for the past 5 years, confronted with the world's greatest recession, causing millions of Americans to lose their jobs in the world's largest economy and consuming more than a trillion dollars of treasury the US couldn't afford to spend to re-start the economy, has spent all of about the equivalent of four 24 hour days each year devoted to the issues that affect more Americans more than anything else.

So, if he doesn't comprehend either the urgency or the priority, you've got to ask what the Hell has he been doing with his time ?

Wanting to give Obama the benefit of the doubt the group credited him for any meetings in which there was even only a remote liklihood that the nation's economic condition was discussed. In order to arrive at the figure they analyzed the official White House meeting calendar, Politico's presidential calendar and media reports.

The public is frequently informed that Obama's time, given his duties, is a precious commodity, not to be squandered and the reason why access to him is necessarily limited. 

The GAI also examined Obama's vacation and golfing calendars. Again wishing to fairly attribute Obama's time they only recorded a round of golf as consuming just 4 hours, though Obama is on record having said that it takes up 6 hours of his day. For each day of vacation they logged only 6 hours assuming that Obama continued to work on pressing issues of national concern even while on vacation. 

In the same time period as the logging for economics meetings Obama, they concluded, racked up 976 hours - or - about twice as much time devoted to his recreation than the nation's economy.

Concentrate on the task of building our nation here at home: putting people back to work, educating our kids, growing our middle class  ???

Yeah .... Only if you believe Obama will do it from a golf course !!!