Charles Krauthammer’s observation about Obama’s remarkable discoveries reminds me of an interview Ché Guevara once gave to the Cuban Communist party newspaper Rebel Youth in the fourth or fifth year of the Cuban Revolution. I came across this while doing research for a feature in The Weekly Standard back in 2007, and I don’t remember now exactly what he said, but basically Ché (who was then minister of industry) was trying to explain the economic catastrophe that Communist rule had caused (something he was a lot more forthright about than Fidel ever was). And what he said, basically, was We didn’t realize that you can’t do import substitution when the world price of your finished products is lower than the world price of the raw material inputs.
So obviously they don’t teach Economics 101 to medical students in Argentina, but at least Ché was able to learn some of the basics from his years presiding over the vertiginous pauperization of Cuban society.