President Obama is among the slickest practitioners ever of the Washington Wink-Wink — what professional politicians in both parties do when they say one thing while planning to do something else entirely.

There was, for example, Obama’s 2008 campaign promise to “cut the federal deficit in half.” And that “net federal spending cut” he would achieve by the end of his first term? Anybody think he didn’t know then that his first term would explode the deficit and spending to historic highs?