My newest American Issues Project column, Obama the car salesman, examines the techniques Obama has used since taking office to get his bad legislation passed. From the stimulus package to the omnibus bill to cap-and-trade and Obamacare, he uses the same tired old tactics. And rather than using savvy political salesmanship, he’s gone for a much sleazier route: the used car salesman. Here’s an excerpt:

Have you ever had to buy a new car? It’s one of the worst purchases you ever have to make. Everyone dreads that day. Oh, you look forward to getting the car. You pick the one you want, you take it for a test drive. You can’t wait to drive it home and start tinkering with it. But man, how you hate having to actually go to the dealership. Why? Because there is always that pushy salesman there. Buying a new car is like playing some ridiculous game that wastes your entire day. As soon as you drive into the parking lot and get out of your vehicle, that salesman is there. He shadows you around the entire parking lot. He talks the entire time. He goes on and on and on about how great each car is, and all of the different qualifications and certifications it has, and how many different colors it comes in. He sticks to you like glue. And once you’ve finally picked your vehicle, the haggling begins. At that point, he starts to treat you like you’re stupid. He starts carrying on about how great a deal you’re getting. You might point out that the car dealership down the street is selling the exact same vehicle for a couple of thousand dollars less — it won’t matter. He’ll dismiss it for the first fifteen minutes and try to convince you that you actually do want to spend an extra $3,000. And when you won’t budge, he inevitably goes and “checks with his manager”… and then comes back and lowers the price $500. And this goes on and on, back and forth, with him continually trying to convince you that you are such a lucky customer, you’re getting the best deal in the world, you must buy it today at THIS PRICE, because tomorrow the deal will be off and it will surely be more expensive. And after an hour or so of this back and forth, if you’re lucky, you finally get the deal you want. You don’t drive out of the parking lot in your new car quite as excited, because you are just so darn exhausted and aggravated at having spent the last four hours dealing with such an annoying, pushy salesman. You hope to God you never have to see that guy again and even though you paid what you wanted to pay and got the car you wanted to get, you still feel like somehow, you got ripped off.

Sounds just like our new president, doesn’t it?

Everything Obama has done to “fix” the economy has been done exactly like that pushy salesman would have done it. Consider the stimulus package. Obama started by telling us how urgent it was that this get passed immediately. We needed to take action NOW, because he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression! That wasn’t the truth, but why let the facts get in the way of your sales pitch? We were told the economy would crumble without the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” (AARA), better known as the stimulus package. It was supposed to fix the economy, create new jobs, and save existing ones from being lost. It was historic, a landmark stimulus bill. He promised to go through the bill, line by line, to eliminate any pork. 9,000 pork-stuffed earmarks later, AARA had reached the $1 trillion mark. So it was scaled down, to a “mere” $787 billion. And it had to be rushed through, because if we waited too long, the opportunity would pass and the nationwide unemployment rate would rise to 8.8 percent, and the economy would just have a massive heart attack! So the Democrats in Congress obediently rammed the bill through (without including any Republicans), and then the stimulus bill took a three-day breather as Obama jetted off to vacation in Hawaii. He finally came back and signed it… only to find, a few months later, that the unemployment rate is now at a twenty-six year high (9.6 percent), the economy is suffering worse than it was before the stimulus package was passed, and the White House is backpedaling furiously. When you think about it, Obama’s entire lead-up to getting the stimulus package approved by the public was exactly like that pushy care salesman, wasn’t it?

And he’s still using the same technique.

Some Americans are gullible enough to still buy into the hype and the sales pitch. These are the same people who will buy into “NO MONEY NOW! $1000 CASH BACK!” deals at car dealerships. Will you be smart enough to recognize the sales pitch and not buy into a bad deal?

Make sure you read the whole thing.