By Michael Gerson, Washington Post

Obama and Carter both lacked credibility

President Jimmy Carter once sent a note to an adviser extolling the importance of crisis to leadership. "When a president has authority to act unilaterally (as in a crisis), his leadership can be exerted. Otherwise, compromise, delay and confusion are more likely. It’s our system. I like it."

Politicians, like the rest of us, are often victims of their wishes. Carter was eventually smacked by the waves of crisis he sought to ride.

But encouraging a sense of crisis is a traditional tool of executive leadership. And using a joint session of Congress to address a single domestic issue is the most dramatic expression of this approach.

Carter did it effectively in April 1977. He spoke of the energy crisis as "the moral equivalent of war." Energy resources were "simply running out." (Carter’s CIA predicted worldwide oil shortages by the mid-1980s.) America needed to "cope with a crisis that otherwise would overwhelm us."

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By Jeffrey Lord, American spectator

Obama is building a credibility gap

The 1967 board game was called “Credibility Gap.”

Created by two academics, it was inspired by what now might be called LBJ Syndrome, the pattern of behavior exhibited in the 1960s by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson. A pattern of behavior that gradually led Americans to the belief LBJ was a hopeless teller of untruths. “Credibility gap” was the much used political term of the day applied to Democrat LBJ whether talking about subjects major (Vietnam, the economy, health care) or minor (insisting an ancestor fought at the Alamo even though said ancestor was soon found to have never arrived in Texas until a decade afterwards.)

As Americans listen to the smooth assurances from President Obama that his health care plan would cost $634 billion over 10 years, a look back at how liberal assurances like these actually work out in practice is in order.