NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.

One of the reasons the president did not sound convincing in his press conference yesterday is that he has taken so many positions on the debt and taxes that it is hard know what his current one is, or whether to take it seriously, much less to gauge how long it will last.

He calls for more taxes, but in December reiterated — after the midterm shellacking — that it was unwise to raise taxes in times of uncertainty. Apparently that was then, this is now; perhaps he calculates that the tea-party angst has peaked.

He deplores threats not to raise the debt ceiling, but as a senator in 2006 voted, replete with lectures on fiscal sobriety, to do just that — even though the debt then was $5 trillion smaller and the economy far stronger....