Well, he certainly has chutzpah.
Former President Barack Obama, desperately desirous of building a legacy, took credit earlier this week in an appearance in Houston for the country's oil and gas boom and for being pro-business. In numerous previous speeches, he has claimed responsibility for the booming economy.
"And by the way," he said at a fundraiser for the Baker Institute at Rice University, deep in oil country, "American energy production, you wouldn't always know it but, you know, it went up every year when I was president. And you know that whole suddenly America is like the biggest oil producer and the biggest - that was me, people."
No mention was made of whether the audience had a good laugh at Obama's expense, but people involved in the oil and gas energy sector know the truth. His administration threw spike strips at the sector wherever possible, promoting policies to curb fossil-fuel usage and production. Among those were federal restrictions on hydraulic fracturing (fracking - which experts give credit for the boom), the federal methane rule, rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, the Clean Power Plan and the Paris climate accord.
Under his White House, the shares of crude oil and natural gas produced on federal lands dropped between 2009 and 2017, according to the Institute for Energy Research.
"Production on federal lands has not been able to fully recover from Obama Administration policies that resulted in a moratorium on offshore energy permitting and long delays in approving drilling permits," the institute said in a statement.
Meanwhile, production of oil and natural gas on non-federal lands "skyrocketed." Indeed, during his administration, oil production grew by 88 percent.
While he was at it the other day, Obama sought a little credit from the rich Texans to whom he spoke for the growth of their stock portfolios.
"I just want you to sometimes you go to Wall Street, and folks would be grumbling about [me being] anti-business," he said. "I said have you checked where your stocks were when I came into office and where they are now. What are you talking - what are you complaining about? Just say thank you, please."
Yes, Obama certainly became cozy with Wall Street, completing the 180-degree turnaround of the parties when Republicans were once the darlings of Wall Street and the elites and Democrats the party of the people.
But the stocks-and-bonds surge didn't always transfer to Middle America.
As onetime Trump labor secretary nominee Andy Puzder pointed out earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, the country's gross domestic product sputtered to 1.5 percent growth in Obama's final six full quarters in office. But it doubled to 3 percent during President Donald Trump's first six full quarters.
During the former president's last 21 months in office, the number of Americans who were employed increased an average of 157,000 a month. But under the current president, that number has increased 36 percent - to 214,000 a month.
Further, Obama's last 21 months saw job openings increase an average of 900 a month. But under Trump's first 21 months, they have averaged 75,000 a month. Quite a difference.
There was also this from Obama in the Houston address:
"Michelle and I and our girls, we came out intact. And what I mean by that is the core values that we brought into the office, pretty homespun values of, you know, tell the truth and try to see the other person's point of view and treat people kindly and with respect."
Tell the truth?
See the other person's point of view?
Treat people kindly and with respect?
The current president could use improvement in all three of those categories, but Obama's "homespun values" didn't always include the characteristics he enumerated.
The biggest "tell-the-truth" fallacy, of course, was the whopper about his Affordable Care Act allowing people to keep their doctor, their health care plan and that most families would save $2,500 on their premiums.
Just one example of his inability to see the other person's point of view was his closed-door meeting in 2009 with Republicans, who wanted to discuss the specifics of his stimulus plan.
"Elections have consequences," he told the party's then second-ranking member, U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor. "And at the end of the day, I won. So I think on that one I trump you."
On treating people kindly and with respect, we immediately think of Obama's Internal Revenue Service, which was weaponized against conservative groups, was forced to apologize last year and had to settle lawsuits with two groups it targeted.
When we think of a president who has been dignified in his retirement and not toured the country campaigning for people to save the policies he put in place, who has not tried to take credit for his successor's triumphs and who has not tried to stoke racial fires, we think of George W. Bush and not Obama.
Bush has spent his retirement years painting but also in extensive charity work, including raising funds for wounded warriors, cervical cancer and veterans with post traumatic stress.
Obama, thanks to our Founding Fathers, has the right of free speech. Unfortunately, the Constitution doesn't put any restrictions on its veracity. And the former president has taken full advantage of that.