“For the last three-and-a-half years, he has been demonstrating he doesn’t understand the economy and what to do about it,” Thompson told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Thursday night. “They came in very convinced that Keynesian economics would bail them out. They were very brash about what they thought the unemployment percentage would be, after their policies were instituted.

“Dead wrong about that — dead wrong about the effect of the stimulus . . . So now, they can only resort -- he can only resort – to going back,” Thompson said. “And the reason he stumbled so much lately is because he is looking backwards all the time — that’s his strategy, apparently.”

Thompson, a Republican presidential candidate in 2008, described the president as a leader who has “literally run out of things to say” about how to get the nation’s economy back on track and, as a result, is simply making excuses and laying the blame on former President George W. Bush.