Karl Rove, in his Wall Street Journal column yesterday, lashed out at President Obama for dishonesty. The title reads:

Presidential Bait-and-Switch
What Obama once promised, and what he’s delivering

The opening salvo:

Barack Obama won the presidency in large measure because he presented himself as a demarcation point. The old politics, he said, was based on “spin,” misleading arguments, and an absence of candor. He’d “turn the page” on that style of politics.

Last week’s presentation of his budget shows that hope was a mirage.

For example, Mr. Obama didn’t run promising larger deficits — but now is offering record-setting ones. He’ll add $4.9 trillion before his term ends and $7.4 trillion if given a second, doubling the national debt in five years and tripling it in 10.

There’s a lot more garbage along the lines of bait-and-switch, but there are enough people who’ll take Karl Rove to task for every last distortion.

I just want to focus on the dishonesty inherent in Rove making this charge at all, and the dishonesty he displays (as usual) with these numbers.

So I guess George W. Bush promised larger deficits when he ran? That’s why it was okay for the national debt to leap from $5.73 trillion when he swaggered into office on January 20, 2001 to $10.63 trillion when he fled with his tail between his legs on January 20, 2009.

And Karl Rove must have had his head tightly wedged in some dank, malodorous place where words don’t penetrate, every time Obama told voters that deficit reduction was going to have to take a back seat initially to pulling the country out of the looming depression that George Bush had fathered. In other words, Obama said in so many words that the deficit was going to have to go up initially. He did, in fact, run promising larger deficits.

But the most aggravating part is Rove’s sheer dishonesty with numbers. Does the WSJ really not fact-check its columnists on stuff like this? Does the WSJ really not care two hoots whether its writers have their numbers and arithmetic right?

Obama took office with the national debt at $10.63 trillion.

I’m not sure that there is anything close to a consensus number yet for how much the deficit is expected to increase in Obama’s first term. And Rove’s journalistic integrity does not stretch to explaining where he pulled his figure of $4.9 trillion from (although it is entirely possible it may have plopped out from the same place from where he periodically dislodges his head).

But even if we grant Rove a $4.9 trillion increase in the national debt in Obama’s first term and a $7.4 trillion increase in a possible second term, there is simply no plausible way that the national debt doubles in five years and triples in ten.

To double in five years, the national debt would have to increase to $21.26 trillion by the end of year 5. Starting at $10.63 trillion, it would increase by $4.9 trillion to $15.53 trillion over the first 4 years. The deficit would have to really pick up the pace in year 5. After averaging $1.23 trillion for the first four years, it would suddenly, and for no apparent reason other than to make Karl Rove’s prediction come true, have to zoom to $5.73 trillion in year 5.

Presumably not even Karl Rove would claim he believes this to be remotely plausible.

(This leaves me wondering: did he really never learn any ‘rithmetic? And what part does he not get? That 10.63 times two is 21.26? That 10.63 + 4.9 is 15.53? Or that 21.26 – 15.53 is 5.73?)

Similarly, Rove’s numbers would put the national debt at $22.93 trillion at the end of 8 years. It triples in 10 years (to $31.89 trillion) only if the deficit in years 9 and 10 totals $8.96 trillion (after adding up to $12.3 trillion in the first 8 years).

Here, in its full glory, is the curious behavior that the deficit would exhibit from year to year as per the arithmetically challenged Karl Rove:
— in the first four years it averages $1.23 trillion per year
— in year 5 it zooms to $5.73 trillion
— obviously frightened out of its wits by that experience, in years 6 through 8 it totally subsides, to average $0.56 trillion per year
— but then, determined to end with a bang and not a whimper, it leaps recklessly again to a level of $4.48 trillion per year for the last two years

All this, in turn, leaves me wondering: he probably thinks no one else can do arithmetic either. Which is why he thinks it’s perfectly safe for him to stand up in the pages of the WSJ and attach whatever claims he likes to the numbers he trots out. It’s perfectly safe to say that the national debt will double in five years and triple in ten. Because no one except rocket scientists can do elementary arithmetic. And no self-respecting rocket scientist would ever read the WSJ.

I still insist in believing that, in any halfway literate country with an ounce of self-respect, anybody with pretensions to journalism who embarrassed himself so thoroughly would be laughed out of journalism forever, and never taken seriously again.

So which is it: are we not halfway literate or do we not have an ounce of self-respect?

(BTW, how funny is it that Bush’s brain is a mental midget?)