It's also important to note that the President is more or less the symbol of policies being implemented rather than the one person who is actually doing everything. He is more or less informed by experts in economics on how to handle the situation. Not to bash on Obama and claim he doesn't know anything about the economy but if you really want to know if his economic plan will work you would want to research his advisors more so than he himself. Remember the "New Deal"? Yeah well Roosevelt didn't really have a plan when he announced the New Deal. He had to seek strong advice from Keynes to actually come up with a solution so it's really ol Jonny's plan and not Roosevelt's.

Also War is good for the economy but only specific sectors of the economy. Buisnesses that would service a war would benefit but then you have to consider the Costs of rebuilding a destroyed society. Sure they'll get their oil and gun slingers will get their share of profits but whose gonna pay for that Army? Also, specific to this time period, its really America that will benefit. Starting a war almost hardly remains exclusive to a single state. Massive emigration, enemies fleeing to different Countries, as well as our vast web of interdependent economics, causes a considerable amount of damage to countries not directly involved. Plus War's inevitably create enemies and enemies cost money on homeland security. Not to mention the inhumane aspects of War. People generally claim that War's are good for the economy because they base their belief off of what happened during WWII. Yes our country experienced an economic boom right afterwards but it was primarily because during those five years of War people conserved a hell of a lot. Given the massive amount of production mixed in with the massive amount of saving is what caused that boom period to emerge. So really the WWII example is more of a fluke rather than a de facto.

Anyway on that note, your right in that people should have voted for Ron Paul. Many of his policies exhibited ambiguity, particularly his foreign policy, but he did have the right idea in that we shouldn't use corporate interests to facilitate our foreign relations, but rather through fair trade and sound economic loaning we would not only have a lot less enemies but this terrorist phenomenon and these ever increasing state failures would decrease as a result. We use economic policies that would result in expanding our own Country, which is great but thats only half of the equation. We need to balance out the power of the World and help everyone out so we can all move towards human progress. Wow that was a mouth full. Sorry.