President Barack Obama, as a candidate, said there were 57 states in the union, and the other night in his debt ceiling press conference, he said his 12-year-old daughter was 13. When he talked about taxing corporate jets more, he didn't seem to know the $3 billion that might be raised over 10 years wouldn't begin to address the $4 trillion issue at hand, and you can't help wishing the problem here was simply math deficiency.

The trouble is, at least on this issue, Obama's flaw seems less an incapacity for arithmetical calculation than a tendency toward demagoguery. I think he knows this jet tax means almost zilch in the fiscal scheme of things. The imagery instead is meant to portray Republicans as people who would kick the stuffing out of underdogs while playing lickspittle to fat cats.

That's useful now because we're rolling to an Aug. 2 deadline for the debt ceiling to be raised. Missing by some days or even weeks wouldn't necessarily hurt much — it's happened several times before — but could lead to missing all kinds of federal expenditures in the long run. That could be awful, though it is equally important to start reducing spending significantly over a 10-year period, as the Republicans want.

The Obama trick is to make the Republicans look like the bad guys if the deadline is missed, and he didn't stop with jet set ruminations. He also wants to tax our oil companies more, mainly, I think, for spite, because once again the revenues will be piffling compared to the problem, and the impact on a crucial American industry unhelpful at an especially important moment.

Next, at a time when the matter most at hand is keeping the federal debt from crushing America, he has a plan to increase it, even though he pledged coming to terms with the GOP on spending reductions. Not through discussions with him, though. He has refused an invitation by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to sit down with Republicans in congressional surroundings and talk.

There was much more noted phoniness in the press conference, such as making it sound as if only "millionaires and billionaires" face tax hikes in the years ahead. It was particularly ridiculous when this ultra-regulator of Wall Street and health care professed to be the only president ever to review bad regulations of the past. As at least one fact-checker has written, each of his five predecessors carried out the same charade.

The worst thing, though, was a lack of serious leadership that should have begun with heeding a majority of his own debt commission. Its recommendations included not just serious spending cuts but also additional revenues through tax reform. Here was an opportunity for bipartisan compromise that was quickly undone by an Obama budget hiking the debt by multi-trillions over the next 10 years.

As top economic experts testify, this current debt is a perilous thing for our nation. Obama ought to help get us out of the mess in part because he did so much to deliver us to this evil with a trillion-dollar stimulus package that was mostly pork-ridden.

It did include a few good things. One such thing was renewing the corporate jet tax break that he now objects to. It is said in one report to have boosted the aircraft industry, probably helping to create jobs. Interesting.

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