Jake Tapper asks Jay Carney a pretty hard question. The penalty for this egregious display of professional journalism follows below.

The LA Times put up a chart that wasn’t what the Obama Campaign hoped anyone would consider an earth-shattering piece of analysis. As unemployment has stayed over 8% the past 3 ½ years, family income has fallen. Ricardo Lopez of The LA Times offers us an analysis of the carnage.

American household median annual incomes have fallen 4.8% since the recession ended, from $53,508 in June 2009 — when the recession technically ended — to $50,964 in June of this year, a study found.

Since sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s what Sentier Research shows us on a nice, concise chart.

I actually think Mitt Romney explained the situation last night better than any set of charts or mathematical analysis. Here is the problem that besets our fair land.

“President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. MY promise…is to help you and your family.”

When we get right down t it, we can have a president who sees the current state of the American Economy as a problem, or he can see it as a mess. As I blogged about three years ago, the difference is this.

It gets back to the difference between a problem and a mess. A mess can either be convenient to a politician or it can be detrimental. If the public trusts that politician, a mess becomes his friend. First, we all know it can’t be solved. Second, we all know it’s someone else’s fault. Keep the trust of the people, and keep that mess around long enough; and it becomes a reelection campaign theme.
Problems are more ornery. When you admit that something is a problem, and you hold the seat of power, guess who owns the (expletive-deleted)? And furthermore, problems have solutions and leaders are duty-bound to identify, sell and execute those solutions. If I, like Barack Obama, basically had no answer to any question other than “How do I get promoted far beyond my individual merits?” I’d rather inherit George W. Bush’s messes – not his problems.

So why, Mr. Carney, is our economy such a mess? I’ll take that one, Mr. Tapper. Our President uses it as a mess to provide him with an excuse for his vast and dim-witted ineluctability. He expressed befuddlement over the economy to one of his wisest and most capable advisors, Dr. Christina Romer. ‘I don’t get it,’ he’d say. ‘We make these large-scale investments in infrastructure. What do you mean there are no jobs?’ But the numbers rarely budged.” From then on out, it was just a mess to him.

Again, Mr. Romney explains what Barack Obama has no intention to admit or comprehend. From last night’s speech we get the following wisdom.

We weren’t always successful at Bain. But no one ever is in the real world of business. That’s what this President doesn’t seem to understand. Business and growing jobs is about taking risk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always striving. It is about dreams. Usually, it doesn’t work out exactly as you might have imagined. Steve Jobs was fired at Apple. He came back and changed the world.

That also brings us to the difference between men who see problems versus men who see messes. Problem-solvers understand that failure offers feedback. Feedback is a gift. Solving a problem is an iterative process. President Romney will try an initial solution; it will partially fail. He’ll come back with better-informed plans until one of them gets it done.

At no point in the process will he chew out his analysts and gripe to the public about the messes he inherited. He not only respects Mr. Obama too much to do this, he respects you and himself. Mr. Carney cannot answer for Mr. Obama, because the maximum effective range of an excuse equals zero. And that’s about all President Tee-Time has done about messes that soil the fabric of our great yet beleaguered nation.