What if the cliches and platitudes are wrong?

From Jim Geraghty's "Morning Jolt."

I didn't think this was the worst speech Obama gave. It's not even that all of the ideas in it are all that terrible. It's just that they're reheated leftovers, reruns, small-ball initiatives that are likely to be as effective as every other stimulus program that repaves sidewalks or funds research on exotic ants. We're a $14 trillion economy that makes everything from timber to jumbo jets to firearms to smart-phone apps to Hollywood movies to every food product under the sun. The notion that some grab bag of tax credits and federal grants is going to kick-start a hiring binge to put 14 million Americans back to work or that the economy is one tax credit for hiring veterans away from recovery is laughable.

The recession we've endured for the past three years is far from normal, and yet we keep getting the normal Keynesian responses. I realize I'm about to offer blasphemies and shockers on par with Rick Perry's Ponzi-scheme comparison, but what if Obama was wrong last night, and a big issue is that some of the people of this country do not, in fact, work hard to meet their responsibilities? What if decades of a lousy education system have left us with a workforce that has too many members with no really useful skills for a globalized economy? What if way too many college students majored in liberal arts and are entering the workforce looking for jobs that will never exist? What if the massive housing bubble got Americans to condition themselves to work in an economy that's never coming back? (How many realtors are unemployed right now?) What if we have good workers who can't move to take new jobs because they're underwater on their mortgages and can't sell their house?