Well, so much for the War on Poverty.

Question: What was the poverty rate in 1966, just as all the Great Society programs began to crank up?

Answer: About 15 percent.

Q. What was the poverty rate in 2010?

A. About 15 percent.

That’s right, after 45 years of Big Government, we’re right where we were, according to the latest data on poverty, released by the U.S. Census Bureau today. And BTW, as you can see, the poverty rate was declining steeply in the years leading up to the Great Society, and began leveling off soon after.

But President Obama scoots merrily along, adding his own Great Society contribution with a national health program we can’t afford, “investing” in all sorts of new technologies, and generally raising spending to about 25 percent of GDP, the highest level since before . . . George Washington.

All while running up the deficit to new records. At least Lyndon Johnson did Socialism in the absence of a roaring deficit.

The statistics released today are abysmal, for us and for Obama.

The poverty rate, at 15.1 percent, is up from 14.3 percent in 2009. At 46.2 million, there are more people overall in poverty than since . . . before George Washington.

Under the nation’s first black president, the poverty rate for blacks has grown from 25.8 percent to 27.4 percent.

And remember, these numbers were probably worse in 2011.

Add all this to an unemployment rate that may well remain above 9 percent through much of 2012 and an economy that has stalled into near-recession, and you have a really miserable political sale for President Obama to make.

If his operatives can reelect him under these circumstances, they are geniuses, and if my back wasn’t bad I’d promise to bow ritually for an hour in their direction.

And they can hardly be blamed if he loses. The real culprits are Obama’s economic advisers, who are still trying to enact the Great Society, which turned out not so great.