I know, I’m as shocked as you are: but that’s what happened. You see, Richard Thaler was trying to push back on the entire steadily-rising gas price thing (four bucks a gallon, if you’re lucky), and so in an op-ed today for the New York Times Thaler authoritatively declared:

Here is a one-item test to see whether you are guilty of cloudy thinking about gas prices: Do you believe that they are something a president can control? Many Americans believe that the answer is yes, but any respectable economist will tell you that the answer is no.

Meet the not-respectable economist Barack Obama:

…for those without video, it’s a campaign ad where then-candidate Barack Obama was engaged in some would-be faux populism over Big Oil and how they were causing high gas prices (three-fifty a gallon, back then), and how Obama would do something about it (mind you, what he did about it, apparently contra Thaler, was to turn what was a somewhat temporary spike in gas prices into the new baseline).  In other words, Barry certainly acted like he thought that he’d have some control over the process there, Professor Thaler. Was that acting an artifact of that informal advice to the President you were saying that you gave, Professor Thaler?

Before you turned on this administration, of course.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Isn’t YouTube fun? …And we have years of footage with which to work with, too.