President Bush (41) never actually expressed amazement at the operation of a grocery supermarket price scanner in 1988. The New York Times made it up and the rest of the mainstream media dutifully repeated it.
President Obama, however, actually said this on The Today Show:
“There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.”
ATMs have been around since since the 1970’s. They are not a recent invention, although their presence has steadily grown over the years. Nevertheless, the economy over which Ronald Reagan presided in the 1980’s created more than 18 million mostly high-paying jobs despite the ever increasing efficiency of the economy. You might almost begin to think that Obama doesn’t understand how an economy grows.
Will the mockery that Obama deserves (and Bush didn’t) be heaped on him by his friends among the mainstream media? I doubt it, but Jonah Goldberg does a good job picking up the slack.
UPDATE: The ATM industry talks back.
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