"Time Is Running Out Faster than Expected"

TIA Daily • March 13, 2009

COMMENTARY

The Obama backlash that I discussed in yesterday's edition of TIA Daily is now emerging as the big news story of the week.

In The Hill, a newspaper for Capitol insiders, congressional Democrats are quoted worrying that Barack Obama's "honeymoon" is fading and that "there is a growing sense that time is running out faster than expected." The reason? The stock market crash and the worsening of the economy, which has accelerated since Obama took office.

"We've got to see an uptick by August or the Democratic majority is in jeopardy," said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), whose state had an 11.6 percent unemployment rate in January.

Stupak doesn't fault Obama for pursuing healthcare reform, because high medical costs are intertwined with the economic difficulties, he said.

But Obama must move quickly, he added, saying, "By summer there is no more honeymoon. Period."

And it is not just the economy. Chas Freeman, the sympathizer of tyrants picked by the Obama administration to be in charge of writing National Intelligence Estimates, did more damage on his way out than on his way in. After resigning, he issued a tirade blaming opposition to his appointment on a secret cabal of Jews. Here is the reaction from the Washington Post:

It wasn't until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair had made. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister "Lobby" whose "tactics plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency" and which is "intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government." Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel—and his statement was a grotesque libel….

Crackpot tirades such as his have always had an eager audience here and around the world. The real question is why an administration that says it aims to depoliticize US intelligence estimates would have chosen such a man to oversee them.

And Obama's staffing problems persist. His appointee as a coordinator for "urban policy" has been caught taking advantage of the unpaid services of an architect who also happened to be the beneficiary of large government projects controlled by his client.

Such scandals are not entirely a distraction. They serve to remind everyone of the corruption and abuse of power endemic in a government bloated by looted dollars. But it is the enormous expansion of government proposed by Obama, the administration's dishonesty regarding the fiscal consequences, and the resulting crash in the financial markets that is really feeding the growing discontent with Obama.

Megan McArdle, an economics blogger for The Atlantic, is the latest defector. Writing about Obama's budget projections, she says:

Of course they're too optimistic. In fact, the word "optimistic" is too optimistic. A better choice might have been "insane."…

Having defended Obama's candidacy largely on his economic team, I'm having serious buyer's remorse. Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritize[ing] a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system….

The budget numbers are just one more blow to the credibility he worked hard to establish during the election…. These numbers...well, I can't really fully describe them on a family blog. But he has now raced past Bush in the Delusional Budget Math Olympics.

The more famous recent Obama defector is CNBC's Jim Cramer. An intolerably snide article in TIME describes how CNBC—the home of Cramer and "tea party" hero Rick Santelli—has become the voice of the investor class, which is ready to rebel against Obama's wealth-destroying policies. The TIME article sniffs that "there's still a small, demographically appealing niche for talking heads fulminating against the 'demonization' of business and being in favor of laissez-faire government." But the niche is not so small. CNBC's ratings have sharply increased during the financial crisis, and the investor class it appeals to is the broad American middle class.

So will all of this stop Obama's agenda? Is there reason to speculate that worry about a backlash will cause him to drop socialized medicine or cap-and-trade energy rationing from his agenda, so that he can focus more effort on stabilizing the financial system?

I doubt it. The Hill is already reporting that Obama has been buoyed by a small stock rally and feels confident going forward with his agenda.

Moreover, the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger argues that an improvement in the markets its not Obama's goal. Instead, he cites a crucial passage from Obama's own budget documents which reveals that the administration's main goal is to reduce income inequality—by means of tearing down the wealth of the nation's top producers.

Turn immediately to page 11. There sits a chart called Figure 9. This is the Rosetta Stone to the presidential mind of Barack Obama. Memorize Figure 9, and you will never be confused. Not happy, perhaps, but not confused….

Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, French economists, are rock stars of the intellectual left. Their specialty is "earnings inequality" and "wealth concentration."

As described in Mr. Obama's budget, these two economists have shown that by the end of 2004, the top 1% of taxpayers "took home" more than 22% of total national income…. [T]heir "Top 1%" chart has become a totemic obsession in progressive policy circles.

Turn to page five of Mr. Obama's federal budget, and one may read these commentaries on the top 1% datum:

"While middle-class families have been playing by the rules, living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have not."…

The rancorous language used to describe these taxpayers makes it clear that as a matter of public policy they will be made to "pay for" the fact of their wealth—no matter how many of them worked honestly and honorably to produce it. No Democratic president in 60 years has been this explicit….

The economy as most people understand it was a second-order concern of the stimulus strategy. The primary goal is a massive re-flowing of "wealth" from the top toward the bottom, to stop the moral failure they see in the budget's "Top One Percent of Earners" chart.

So there you have it. The Obama administration's goal is not to revive the economy, but to attack its "commanding heights"—and level them down to the ground.

One of the main signs of Obama's indifference to the economy, as many have pointed out, is his failure to make sure that the Treasury is fully staffed, even as that agency is supposed to be taking the lead on a massive rescue of the nation's banks. And the Associated Press is reporting yet another withdrawal of a top-level Treasury nominee. This is part of the reason why there is still no plan for what to do about failing banks, a full two months into Obama's presidency.

Of course, the Republicans have problems of their own, which they are always skilled at manufacturing. Afraid of having the "race card" used against them for the next four years, the party selected black Republican Michael Steele to be the public face of the party—only to discover that he is prone to cave in and tell the left-leaning press whatever it wants to hear, whether that means defaming Rush Limbaugh or flip-flopping on abortion.

If you need an inspirational antidote to all of the current news about politics and the stock market, I would direct you to composer M. Zachary Johnson's moving tribute to Schuyler Chapin, a former director of New York City's Metropolitan Opera who passed away early this week. Readers of TIA know Mr. Johnson for his writings on music, and hopefully also for his own compositions. (If not, I highly recommend that you buy his CD.) But he was also a personal secretary for Mr. Chapin in the final years of his life, and he offers a wonderful description of what the experience meant to him.

When the world recently lost Beverly Sills, Luciano Pavarotti and Brooke Astor (three of Mr. Chapin's many illustrious friends), I felt much the same as I do now: that their deaths represented a loss of the living links to the sensibilities of a prior era, to the values and culture of the pre-counterculture, pre-modernist world….

I feel similarly about Schuyler Chapin.

I grew up in post-counterculture, post-60s America, and have never liked the nature or results of the counterculture upheavals or the ideas behind them. Rather, I have for a long time admired the art, manners, and many of the basic values of pre-WWII culture. The 19th century had nevertheless been distant for me; the era was something I learned about from books and film, not something I had had firsthand contact with.

Schuyler Chapin was for me a direct link and immediate manifestation of that world. I cannot tell you how important this was for me personally, particularly given the kind of music I write. Knowing Schuyler was a concretization and affirmation for me of a part of myself.

For a description of an inspiring life and its beneficent impact on the world, read the whole thing. It's a reminder that we could all use right about now.—RWT