In response to John Waters’ column titled “President Obama delivers for Wisconsinites,” President Barack Obama sure did deliver in the form of a gigantic package called “preaching to the choir what they want to hear” and a refrain of his failed policies. Of course, after getting thoroughly destroyed by Mitt Romney at the first presidential debate, it would make sense for Obama to hold a campaign rally at a university so overrun with liberals that it has earned the nickname “Berkeley of the Midwest.” Despite offering little substance, the crowd gobbled up his words as their leftist standard bearer indeed delivered everything they wanted to hear.

One such item was the often-repeated lie Romney shipped American jobs overseas. Despite this falsity being repeatedly debunked by FactCheck and Obama providing zero evidence for his claim, it resonates well with corporation hatin’ liberals. When we combine that with Obama’s insistence on a tax credit for shipping jobs overseas, we have an instant best seller and the crowd goes wild. What Obama is either oblivious to or doesn’t want us to know about is a specialized tax credit for companies relocating overseas simply doesn’t exist. There is a tax credit for costs associated with moving a firm, but it applies equally to relocating within our own nation – there’s no incentive for leaving our borders.

Next up for delivery was Obama again making the bogus claim Romney has a $5 trillion tax plan. Again, nothing but hype. This number comes from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimating Romney’s cuts would cost $480 billion by 2015, which is then extrapolated to nearly $5 trillion over 10 years. Yet, as PolitiFact and other organizations are quick to demonstrate, this figure is completely one-sided and ignores additional revenue from Romney’s abolition of many tax deductions and loopholes. Obama’s own deputy campaign manager, Stephanie Cutter, has admitted Romney’s tax plan “won’t be near $5 trillion” when it’s taken in its full context. But don’t mind the facts – Obama was here to deliver popular punch lines.

Obama then entered the point of absurdity when he remarked, “I want to control more of our own energy. After 30 years of doing nothing, we raised fuel standards so that by the middle of the next decade, your cars and trucks will go twice as far on a gallon of gas. That’s good for your pocketbook, that’s good for our economy and it’s also good for our environment.” If we consider gas prices have doubled and under Obama’s hostile energy plans they would double again within a decade, there’s nothing, but a huge societal net loss with his excessive energy regulations. Let’s just dismiss for a second Obama’s roadblocks to increasing our offshore drilling or domestic refining capacity – despite forking over billions of taxpayer dollars for the Brazilians to do just that – or the billions wasted on bankrupt “green energy” firms. Let’s also overlook that this is the same man who said, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket,” and openly admitted he’d wipe out the coal industry with regulations. Good for our pocketbook, indeed.

The next line of the president’s speech was nothing but a shameful, deliberate lie: “The guy who was playing Mitt Romney said he refuses to close a loophole that gives big oil companies $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies every single year.” Good Lord. Was the president too focused on his thrashing in Wednesday’s debate to notice Romney specifically said he’d be very open to eradicating those very subsidies and they probably wouldn’t survive as part of his plan to reduce overall tax rates? I can’t help but wonder if the president is as utterly clueless as his statements imply, or if it was a carefully crafted, intentional lie in order to fire up his liberal base.

I’ll admit, I laughed at the president’s hilarious line about Romney “cracking down on Big Bird” as his method to balance the budget. Yet comic relief aside, this also failed to add anything of real substance to the debate. Romney’s comment was merely a simple example of how he’d employ his guideline that if a program isn’t worth funding under borrowed Chinese dollars, it would be scrapped. Obama has lost all legitimacy on his claims to reduce the deficit – the man who promised to “cut the deficit in half” instead doubled it and exploded the national debt by $6 trillion.

You know what? John Waters was right – Obama did deliver. That is, he delivered a prepared stump speech – written by others – full of familiar, popular rhetoric in front of an overly receptive crowd. For a campaign, that’s good business. Unfortunately for Obama, there’s no teleprompter at the debates.

Justin Kramer ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in nuclear engineering.