There are basically two schools of thought about President Obama's leadership of the American economy currently in circulation. One is that our economic doldrums are due to the fact that though the president really wants the U.S. to have a thriving economy, he just doesn't know how to bring that about. This school of thought entails that Mr. Obama is totally unqualified for the position he's in, incompetent, and/or not very smart.
The second school of thought is that President Obama is actually very bright and very competent and our economy is on precisely the trajectory he wants it to be on. His ambition is to "fundamentally transform" this country, eradicate the capitalist system that has created so much prosperity, and replace it with a big government socialist state similar to those which are failing so spectacularly in Europe. Economic stagnation prepares the ground for that change by making it appear that capitalism is a failed system, and Mr. Obama is masterfully leading us to that denouement.
Either the President wants to fix the economy but can't, or he can fix it but won't. Of the two possibilities I don't know which is the more likely. Certainly neither is attractive. To deny that he can't fix it is to imply that he's malevolent. To deny that he won't fix it implies that he's not up to the office to which he was elected.
There is a third possibility, of course, one toward which I incline. Perhaps Mr. Obama really does want to dismantle American capitalism and replace it with big government euro-socialism, not because he's malevolent but because he really believes socialism is the more just economic arrangement. He sincerely believes that it is unjust for some people to have more of the world's goods than others. If this is the correct explanation, then questions arise, at least in the minds of those not on the fringe left, about his wisdom and judgment.
In any case, none of the alternatives are pleasant to contemplate. Maybe there's a fourth possibility that I'm just not seeing.