Obama's Hayes Of History

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/091012-625254-obama-bumbles-on-iphone-yet-arrogantly-belittles-rutherford-hayes.htm

History: As President Obama fumbled with an iPhone, the blogosphere recalled he had earlier falsely bad-mouthed President Rutherford B. Hayes as a technological troglodyte. It's not his error that annoys but his arrogance.

For a man who would have Americans believe that he and his big government are smarter than anyone, it might help if the president could show some evidence of it when he lectures others.

Instead, Obama bumbled around on an iPhone at a campaign stop with no idea how to master the device, triggering a viral response on the Internet about his past pontifications on history and technology. To Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds, it called to mind Obama's errant claims about 19th century President Rutherford B. Hayes last March:

"There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don't believe in the future, and don't believe in trying to do things differently," Obama told supporters.

"One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, 'It's a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?' That's why he's not on Mount Rushmore, because he's looking backwards. He's not looking forward. He's explaining why we can't do something, instead of why we can do something."

In reality, Hayes never made such a statement.

Hayes in fact was precisely the opposite of what Obama claimed, installing the first telephone in the White House, being the first president to make use of a typewriter and asking Thomas Edison over to play his new phonograph. His legacy is that of the man who led the U.S. during the Second Industrial Revolution in 1877.

That revolution was real, not a chimerical, built on the crony capitalism and central planning that characterize Obama's bid to push alternative energy to the fore in the name of "progress."

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