In a recent speech at the University of Minnesota, President Barack Obama proclaimed, "This election is a choice - between the policies that got us into this mess and the policies that are leading us out of this mess. It's a choice between the past and the future; a choice between hope and fear; a choice between falling backwards and moving forwards."

But there's a problem.  Those inspiring clichés now must contend with the realities of his policies; realties that cripple the wings of his once soaring rhetoric and expose it for what it is...mere pandering.

To be sure, the president is right on several points.  This election is about a choice.  And it is about choosing between the policies that got us into our problems and the ones that will help get us out.

But consider: during a debate with Hillary Clinton, candidate Obama made clear what it was that got us into the mess when he pontificated, "you can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children and our grandchildren...And you don't increase spending, unless you're eliminating some spending or you're finding some new revenue. That's how we got an additional $4 trillion worth of debt under George Bush. That is helping to undermine our economy. And it's going to change when I'm president of the United States."

Did it?  Yes.  It got worse.

With staggeringly large majorities in both houses of Congress, President Obama and the Democrats quadrupled the Bush deficits through a failed stimulus bill and proposed budgets for the coming years that (according to a studies by the Heritage Foundation and the Washington Post) would add twice as much debt as President Bush did in the same amount of time. 

Further, though President Obama loves to talk about how when Bush was in office the Republicans, "ran the car into the ditch," he conveniently forgets that during the last two years of Bush's tenure, Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid wielded the gavel.  In other words, the economic policies that Mr. Obama inherited were the product of his own party's Congressional leadership.  Mr. President, if it's bad to sign those bills (as Bush did), how much worse is it to originate and pass them in the first place (as Pelosi/Reid did)?

Moreover, analysis of the President's own Treasury Department numbers reveals that under her leadership as Speaker of the House, Pelosi has overseen a $5 trillion increase in the national debt.  Put another way, the first 57 Speakers of the House in U.S. history combined racked up less debt than Pelosi heaped upon our children and grandchildren in just four years.

Understanding that she is the woman every Democrat representative (blue dogs and lap dogs alike) across the country unanimously entrusted to set their agenda, the choice we face on Election Day becomes crystal clear.

The President is also right that this election offers the stark difference between hope and fear.

While the Republicans - to their great credit - have largely selected a nationwide slate of candidates committed to ideas like limited government, balanced budgets, constitutional fidelity, and empowering the individual to pursue his or her own definition of happiness without the burden of over-regulation and over-taxation, the Democrats have tried a different tack.

Besides their biennial strategy of scaring seniors into the voting booth with wild and baseless accusations that their Republican counterparts will gamble away Social Security or destroy Medicare, Democrats have decided to spend their campaign dollars making personal attacks.

As ABC's Jonathan Karl noted, "As you watch this year's ads - and I've been watching all too many lately - you'll notice a striking difference between Democratic and Republican attack ads: Democrats are attacking over personal issues, Republicans are attacking over policy."

Karl wasn't alone in his assessment.  After viewing 900,000 of this year's political ads, a study from the Wesleyan Media Project concluded, "Democrats are using personal attacks at much higher rates than Republicans and a much higher rate than Democrats in 2008."

Perhaps the President could enlighten us as to how all this left-wing negativity coming from his party puts "an end to the petty grievances...that for far too long have strangled our politics," as he promised to do in his inaugural address?

Alas, he's probably too busy with his car analogies.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama's been cracking up his sycophantic supporters with ten-year-old recycled jokes like, "You want to go forward, what do you do? You put it in 'D.' When you go backward, what do you do? You put it in 'R.'" 

But if we really are in a ditch - as Obama has already told us - does it make more sense to reverse our way out of it, or drive ourselves deeper into it?  That's the choice before us.