My fellow Americans:
Can I share a secret? The presidency I walked into wasn’t anything like the presidency I’d imagined. Remember, Lehman collapsed just six weeks before the 2008 election. Suddenly we were shedding 750,000 jobs a month. Here, Barack, they said – take the keys.
But presidents play the hand they’re dealt. So I threw a lot of spaghetti against the wall – as did Ben Bernanke, with my support – and enough of it stuck to prevent a second Great Depression. “Obama: It Could Have Been Worse” isn’t a winning slogan. But it really could have been. Between our stimulus, the GMand Chrysler restructurings, the bank stress tests and creative Fed steps, we avoided the abyss.