It is helpful, in these days of Obama stumbles, to remember that it took Bill Clinton quite a while to get his sea legs. On the other hand, Clinton never promised, and never attempted, to deliver fundamental change. Nor did he have the opportunity to change the national conversation the way that Obama does. We are in a world of hurt, and a clear and forceful president could take control of the national conversation. As I’ve said before, it’s always possible that Obama is thinking several moves ahead, but recent developments are certainly not encouraging. It is unclear precisely what Obama gets from the Judd Gregg nomination. We know what we get: another Republican Senator and a cabinet official who has undercut his new boss before even being confirmed. And, no question he’ll sail through, while Hilda Solis dangles at the whim of the Republican rump.
In the end, though, it’s the economy that will make or break Obama. It’s pretty clear that the Republicans are perfectly happy to wreck the economy if they can bring Obama down in the process. What’s more depressing is that Obama has hired a crew of “experts” who seem determined to do the Republican’s dirty work. Read this, (via Atrios). The upshot of the article is that, other than some cosmetics, such as the executive compensation limits (which are so riddled with holes they will prove meaningless) the Obama approach, as envisioned by his Wall Street retread appointees, is eerily similar to the Bush approach. If we’ve learned anything in the past eight years it’s that the Bush approach to anything is presumptively the wrong approach.
The Democrats are a timid lot, who haven’t quite come to terms with the fact that they are in the majority. They are afraid of words like “socialism” and “nationalize”. They are about to bail out these banks, enrich the stockholders, fleece the taxpayers, and prolong this recession, all to avoid taking effective steps that would leave them open to hearing those words. The fact is that they will hear them anyway. If the Republicans have proved anything in the last two weeks (as if we didn’t know this already) it’s that they are quite willing to lie, in unison, about things great and small (one example here). It’s pretty clear that a response similar to Sweden’s (nationalize, then privatize when things are stable) to their banking crisis would be both fair and effective. Swedish taxpayers got their money back. We never will. We are going to end up buying crap at inflated prices. We will never get our money back, and the bankers and their stockholders will be sitting pretty. To paraphrase Woody Allen: This plan is a travesty. It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.
Obama will rue the day that he put these foxes in charge of the henhouse.
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