The Backlash Begins

We did want change. Bush, his Administration and ...and Congress (let us not forget them at all e.g. Barney and Nancy) messed things up. We knew that. However, the solution to this is not Obama, and it was not that other guy McCain, either.

However, now we got Obama....we have a bigger mess happening.

I have to say...this is real change for America and the world!
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TIA Daily • March 12, 2009

1. The Obama Backlash Begins

It's still early, but this past week has seen the beginning of a backlash against Barack Obama—a backlash in the media, among the Washington establishment, and among an important segment of the public.

A revealing early skirmish was the appointment of Chas Freeman—an "Israel Lobby" conspiracy theorist, Saudi mouthpiece, and apologist of China's tyrants—to be in charge of writing America's National Intelligence Estimates.

Freeman withdrew his nomination on Tuesday when it became clear that he would face opposition even from congressional Democrats. The whole imbroglio is described below, including Freeman's departing tirade about the perfidious influence of the Jews.

I suspect that this incident will be marked as the beginning of a sharp disillusionment with Obama among many "moderates" and among a swath of the center-left that is generally pro-Israel and remembers the old-fashioned "liberal" stance of being opposed to dictatorship and political oppression—people like Marty Peretz at The New Republic.

It will get worse, as these people begin to realize that Freeman was not some aberration, not just a "failure of vetting," which implies that the administration would not have chosen him if they had only been more aware of his views. Rather, it will become clear that Obama's policies and appointments are motivated by a far-left ideology that is hostile to American interests and allies and sympathetic to dictatorship.

And remember that the public is not really paying much attention yet to Obama's foreign policy. When they start to pay attention—when some new disaster forces them to pay attention—they will begin to take the measure of the new president and how he is conducting himself in office, and I suspect they will not like what they see.

Meanwhile, in another promising foreign-policy development, it looks like Senator Leahy's "Truth Commission"—an attempt to harass and intimidate the intelligence agents who helped prevent terrorist attacks on the US for the past seven years—has fizzled.

"The Intel Czar Stumbles," Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, March 10

Chas Freeman, the Obama administration's choice to serve in a key US intelligence post, abruptly withdrew Tuesday after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and numerous other congressional leaders complained to the White House that he was too closely tied to Saudi and Chinese government interests.
The resignation of Freeman represents another serious "vetting" embarrassment for the White House and a personal blow to Dennis Blair, President Obama's national intelligence director. After choosing Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council, Blair had publicly defended his choice and insisted as recently as this week that he had no intention of withdrawing the selection. On Monday, Freeman himself was telling people on Capitol Hill that the more criticism was heaped on him, the more intent he was on fighting to stay at the intelligence council….

A spokeswoman for Blair said that neither Freeman nor the intelligence czar would have any comment beyond the brief written statement Blair issued Tuesday regarding Freeman's withdrawal. But in a rambling and angry e-mail obtained Tuesday night by Foreign Policy, Freeman lashed out at his accusers and seemed to blame all his troubles on unnamed members of the "Israel Lobby."

"I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office," Freeman wrote, explaining his decision to withdraw. "I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country.... The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth. The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors."…

Pelosi in particular was upset about public comments that seemed to belittle the Chinese human-rights movement—a cause she has championed for years. In 2005, for instance, Freeman was quoted as writing in a public e-mail about the Tiananmen Square massacre: "[T]he truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud … In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at 'Tian'anmen' stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.

"I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be," he added. "Such folk, whether they represent a veterans' 'Bonus Army' or a 'student uprising' on behalf of 'the goddess of democracy' should expect to be displaced with despatch [sic] from the ground they occupy."

2. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Some of the building backlash against the administration is directly self-inflicted.

The White House's press flacks and polemicists may have thought that they were very clever to target Rush Limbaugh; while he is popular with the conservative "base," he is apparently not well liked by moderates. But having indulged in this kind of argument ad hominem—attacking the message by attacking the messenger—they can't stop with Limbaugh.

Thus, they have decided to target any critic of the administration. The latest target: CNBC financial commentator Jim Cramer. I can't recall, by the way, previous presidents having their press secretaries single out specific media figures by name and making them the targets of personal put-downs, as Obama's people have done with Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli, and now Cramer.

But what makes this a completely self-inflicted injury is that Cramer is a Democrat who supported Obama during the election. Yet he is still an investor who wants his audience to prosper and grow rich—and he has instead watched their portfolios crash by another third due to Obama's bumbling.

But most of all, what emerges from Cramer's response to the White House criticisms is his sudden realization, based on statements by the president and his press secretary, that the administration doesn't give a damn about investors, they they are indifferent to the horrific losses in the stock market. This is how Obama will create many new enemies. (See also item #6 below.)

Cramer admits that he started out, in his teenage years, as a Trotskyite. Maybe this experience will help move him a little further toward the right and towards advocacy of the free market. In much the same way that the neoconservatives were famously converted from the left by the experience of being mugged, how many people like Cramer might be converted by the experience of seeing the stock market get mugged.

"My Response to the White House," Jim Cramer, TheStreet.com, March 5

The lines are drawn pretty clearly: If you can help people make money to be able to retire, enjoy life, pay for college, pay down debt, etc., you are a "good guy," so to speak. If you take the other side of the trade, you are, well, let's say, a less favored fellow. And if you gun for the gigantic investor class that is out there that includes 90 million people in one form or another, whether it be 401(k)s or individual stocks or pension plans, then you are on my enemies list….
"I'm not entirely sure what he's pointing to to make some of the statements," [White House Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs said about my point that President Obama's budget may be one of the great wealth destroyers of all time. "And you can go back and look at any number of statements he's made in the past about the economy and wonder where some of the backup for those are, too."

Look at the incredible decline in the stock market, in all indices, since the inauguration of the president, with the drop accelerating when the budget plan came to light because of the massive fear and indecision the document sowed: raising taxes on the eve of what could be a second Great Depression, destroying the profits in healthcare companies (one of the few areas still robust in the economy), tinkering with the mortgage deduction at a time when US house price depreciation is behind much of the world's morass and certainly the devastation affecting our banks, and pushing an aggressive cap and trade program that could raise the price of energy for millions of people….

Gibbs went on to say, "If you turn on a certain program, it's geared to a very small audience. No offense to my good friends or friend at CNBC, but the president has to look out for the broader economy and the broader population."

How much I wish it were true right now that stocks played less of a role in peoples' lives. But stocks, along with housing, are our principal forms of wealth in this country. Only the people who have lifetime tenure, insured solid pensions and rent homes but own no stocks personally are unaffected…. If we only want to help those who have no wealth to destroy, we are not helping the majority of Americans; we are not helping the broader population.

Obama has undeniably made things worse by creating an atmosphere of fear and panic rather than an atmosphere of calm and hope….

I believe his agenda is crushing nest eggs around the nation in loud ways, like the decline in the averages, and in soft but dangerous ways, like in the annuities that can't be paid and the insurance benefits that will be challenging to deliver on.

So I will fight the fight against that agenda. I will stand up for what I believe and for what I have always believed: Every person has a right to be rich in this country and I want to help them get there. And when they get there, if times are good, we can have them give back or pay higher taxes. Until they get there, I don't want them shackled or scared or paralyzed. That's what I see now.

If that makes me an enemy of the White House, then call me a general of an army that Obama may not even know exists -- tens of millions of people who live in fear of having no money saved when they need it and who get poorer by the day.


3. Not the Barack Obama They Knew

During last year's general election and during his presidential transition, Obama seemed to move sharply toward the political center, indicating his support for conventional policies and naming some cabinet appointees who had a reputation for being "centrists." It is now obvious that this was a feint intended to disarm Obama's critics and make them slow to respond when he unveiled his actual agenda, which is an attempt to move America much farther to the left.

But it hasn't taken long for a lot of people to realize that they have been fooled. This is beginning to happen, not just among the general public, but even among the media and political establishment in Washington and New York.

In Newsweek, Howard Fineman writes that "the establishment is beginning to mumble that the president may not have what it takes." Fineman's own comments are a mushy, toadying mess, but he offers a helpful list of the growing criticisms of Obama.

Below, Jennifer Rubin gives an overview of how a collection of media commentators who consider themselves to be "moderates" have come to realize that Obama is pursing a leftist agenda and are now complaining that they were deceived.

"'I'm Maureen Dowd, and I've Been Had'," Jennifer Rubin, Pajamas Media, March 4

They may need a support group before the month is out. They could gather in New York or Washington where many victims reside. The meetings would start: "I'm Maureen [or David]. I'm a duped Barack voter. And I'm mad."
The ranks indeed are filling with the disaffected and the disappointed—Chris Buckley, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, David Gergen…. And then there is the very angry Marty Peretz. Their complaints are varied but expressed with equal amounts of remorse and bitterness. They all have been done wrong by Barack.

Chris Buckley is in mourning over the loss of fiscal sobriety and the sense he has enabled a spend-aholic….

Maureen Dowd has multiple complaints. She's miffed that the post-racial president's attorney general is playing the race card and she too has had it on the spending and business-as-usual fronts:… "'You know, there are times where you can afford to redecorate your house and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding its foundation,'" he said recently about the 'hard choices' we must make. Yet he did not ask Congress to sacrifice and make hard choices; he let it do a lot of frivolous redecorating in its budget….

"Team Obama sounds hollow, chanting that 'the status quo is not acceptable,' even while conceding that the president is accepting the status quo by signing a budget festooned with pork."

Then there's David Brooks…. Looking for a moderate, he wound up with a crazed leftist….

Meanwhile, Marty Peretz, who attested to candidate Obama's pro-Israel and tough foreign policy bona fides during the campaign, now is incensed the president has put into a high level national security post Chas Freeman, the Israel-bashing toady of the Saudis who assigned responsibility "both ways" for 9/11 and bemoaned the Chinese didn't crack down on the Tiananmen Square protesters quick enough….

They and the rest of the country are figuring out the bitter truth: Obama bears little resemblance to the moderate and soothing figure who tied up John McCain in knots.

4. "A Great Pretender"

Here's another segment of the media that Obama is beginning to lose. He's losing Israel backers (see item #1), the financial press (item #2), and "moderates" (item #3). He's also losing the serious, "technocratic" types. This is the professorial type who tries to stay neutral on "ideological" issues and instead focuses on demanding honesty about the actual economic numbers behind any given political proposal.

The quintessential example of this type is economics columnist Robert Samuelson. In the article below, Samuelson assails the ruinous dishonesty of Obama's budget and concludes that Obama is just another manipulative politician who "constantly says he's doing things that he isn't, and…relies on his powerful rhetoric to obscure the difference."

"Presidential Double-Talk," Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek, March 7

To those who believe that Barack Obama is a different kind of politician—more honest, more courageous, more upfront—please don't examine his administration's recent budget….
Barack Obama is a great pretender. He constantly says he's doing things that he isn't, and he relies on his powerful rhetoric to obscure the difference. He has made "responsibility" a personal theme, and the budget's cover line is "A New Era of Responsibility." He claims that the budget begins "making the tough choices necessary to restore fiscal discipline." It doesn't….

As a society, we should be willing to pay in taxes what it costs government to provide desired services. If benefits don't seem equal to burdens, then the spending isn't worth having (granting exceptions for deficits in wartime and economic slumps).

If Obama were "responsible," he would be leading a candid conversation about government's size and role. Who deserves support and why?...

It would also be "responsible" for Obama to acknowledge the big gamble in his budget. Defense—a.k.a. national security—has long been government's first job. In Obama's budget, defense spending drops from 20 percent of the total in 2008 to 14 percent in 2016, the smallest share since the 1930s. The decline, reflecting large savings from an Iraq troop drawdown, presumes a much safer world. If the world doesn't cooperate, Obama's deficits would grow….

Confidence (too little) and uncertainty (too much) are at the core of this crisis. All of Obama's double-talk threatens to reduce the first and raise the second. Investors and traders have surely noticed the discrepancies between Obama's words and actions.

5. All of the People All of the Time

So when will Obama begin to lose the support of the American people? The poll results reported below offer the first indication. They show that Obama is still widely popular, but that his policies, including the massive expansion of government, are not popular. Moreover, they show growing negative reactions to Obama among voters on the right and the center.

Most important, however, is the fact that the polls register growing opposition to Obama among voters who follow the news closely, particularly the financial news. These are precisely the people who have the most influence on the opinions of those who don't follow the news closely. For more on these people, and why they're turning against Obama, see item #6 below.

It's a bad position to be in, when your continued political success depends on the public not paying any attention to what you're doing.

"The Cracks In Obama's Popularity," Amy Walter, National Journal, March 10

[A]s many have noted in recent days, the latest polling shows that [Obama is] more popular than his party or his proposals….
The 31 percent of voters who say they are paying attention to the various economic plans in Washington "very closely" are the most pessimistic about Obama's economic programs, as well as Obama personally. For example, a bigger percentage of these voters who oppose Obama's $75 billion plan to help prevent foreclosures are in the "very closely" category than those who are paying attention "somewhat closely." Just 27 percent of those who give Obama a positive job approval rating are in this "very closely" category, while 42 percent of those who say they disapprove of the way he's handling his job are in this group. In other words, there's evidence that those who are the closest followers of the details are those who are more disapproving of the job Obama's doing.

It's important to note that this group of voters is wealthier, better educated and slightly more Republican. Yet, remember, Obama did very well with these voters in 2008. He split with John McCain at 49 percent among those making $100,000 or more, and carried both college educated and post-graduate voters.

Finally, voters are less supportive of more government involvement in the economy than they were just a month ago. In January, 55 percent of voters were supportive; today it's at 49 percent. Meanwhile, the number of people who say they think it's a bad idea rose 8 points from 37 percent to 45 percent.

So, how long does Obama's glow survive? No one knows for sure, though many peg the summer as make-or-break. Until then, the reality is that the more scrutiny these programs get—and the more closely the details are followed—the harder it will be for him to keep those ratings up.

6. "Obama Doesn't Get It"

The polls indicate that opposition to President Obama and his agenda is not yet a broad, popular movement. But I have already noticed a sharp shift among an important and very influential subset: the entrepreneurs, individual investors, independent professionals, and small business owners. These people are the backbone of the upper middle class, and Obama has set out to turn them into an exploited class who are to be drained dry to pay for his expansion of government.

These people see what is coming, and their panic is radiating outward, resulting in the actual, literal hoarding of gold, in response to fears of inflation and financial collapse, as well as a growing interest in the primitive, pre-money-economy expedient of barter, which helps productive people minimize their taxable cash income.

And it can also be seen in the fact that "Saturday Night Live" is now beginning to make fun of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, presenting him as a gullible, empty-headed naïf going onto national television to offer $400 billion to the first person who can come up with a solution to the financial crisis.

But laughter will not be the dominant reaction to Obama's failures; the dominant reaction will be rage. Obama is taking a public accustomed to nearly three decades of prosperity, and he is about to put them through a ringer of hardship and privation. They are going to become very, very angry.

The article below is a preview, presenting the Obama economy from the perspective of real small business owner. What it makes completely clear is the fact that Obama is ignorant of and indifferent to the whole world of business and investing—which means he is out of touch with the concerns and economic requirements of most of the American middle class.

This is the sort of thing that can add a little steam to a tea party.

"When It Comes to Real-Life Experience with Stocks, Obama Doesn't Get It," Jim Prevor, The Weekly Standard, March 6

On Tuesday, March 3, 2009, President Obama made comments about the stock market…. As he spoke, I realized that three things have changed, perhaps profoundly and forever, regarding the way many people will perceive the President….
When President Obama dismissed a decline of the Dow from 9,625 on Election Day to 6,763 on March 2 as something akin to a tracking poll, the vast middle class suddenly saw how alienated their concerns were from Obama's concerns….

I realized that in the White House, Obama doesn't deal with what I do: Scared secretaries with tears in their eyes coming in to ask for advice when they see 401-K statements down by 25 percent since Election Day.

Obama seems unconcerned with a divorced woman approaching retirement age looking at her 401-K statement and realizing that her plans to retire and spend time with her church and her grandkids are gone.

I wonder how the president would answer his salesman who, after never asking for a dime in his whole life, asks for a loan, because he had promised his children that he would pay his grandkids' college tuition and he hasn't the foggiest idea how he is going to do that now….

Obama doesn't understand the implications of the stock market dive for real people....

Every stock market investor quickly learns that the math of markets is forbidding. After all, if stock prices go down by 50 percent, they have to rally by 100 percent to get one back to even.

Yet this doesn't begin to explain the problem…. If a family needs $25,000 to pay tuition and it sells stocks to raise the money, that money is not available to benefit from any future upswing in market values. So even if Obama orchestrates a miraculous rebound, countless millions of people will have been permanently hurt….

We learn that the president knows nothing about markets or business….

The notion that the president and his party are alienated from this mainstream of productive America for whom the stock market is not like a tracking poll but is real life is the kind of realization that shapes political identities.