If we didn't have a new Democratic President and a stronger Democratic congressional majority committed to holding frequent press conferences and daily public hearings, i.e. if the Republicans were still in charge of Washington, the public and the media might never have had the information to develop its outrage over the AIG bonuses -- so who's really on the side of the public? Before this crisis, no Republicans in Washington were paying any attention to what the banks and investment houses were doing, when they securitized mortgages, did credit default swaps, and let the bonus babies and their bosses drive their companies off a cliff. Where were Eric Cantor and Glenn Beck when that was happening? Obama didn't cause this crisis, and he wasn't the problem. Obama's the solution; that's why he was elected. The public should be reminded that unless we're prepared to side with the same Washington crowd that created the problem, we'd better let the guy we hired to fix the mess get on with the business of doing so.
Right now there is a bandwagon on the right which is trying to make Obama the target of the populist outrage about the AIG bonuses being eagerly fanned by congressional Republicans and the broadcast media. Most of the right is laboring mightily to persuade the media that Obama's popularity can be tanked by this rage. The media smell blood -- "let's take down a president!" -- so on Wednesday everyone from Dana Bash on CNN to Tina Daunt, the celebrity columnist in the LA Times, was eagerly slapping Obama as if they had him strapped into a Guantanamo torture chair.
All of us who want to stop this absurd detour from reality -- the reality that we have to help this president surmount this crisis, so that he can get on to the full plate of what he wants to accomplish -- need to drive home, day after day, two points. First, the AIG bail-out and the discretion allowed to AIG to hand out bonuses were sanctioned and blessed by Henry Paulsen, Bush's Treasury Secretary, who revealed no details at the time. If we didn't have a new Democratic President and a stronger Democratic congressional majority committed to holding frequent press conferences and daily public hearings, i.e. if the Republicans were still in charge of Washington, the public and the media might never have had the information to develop its outrage -- so who's really on the side of the public? Second, if President Obama in the next few weeks decides that banks need more federal guarantees to stop them from failing, that's to prevent the credit we need to finance our businesses and housesholds from shutting down altogether, and with it, the economic recovery. Bush bailed out his friends; Obama is disentangling the mess. And by the way, ALL of Wall Street took egregious risks during the unregulated drunken financial orgies permitted by the Bush Administration. Our financial system is on the precipice primarily for one reason: Before this crisis, no Republicans in Washington were paying any attention to what the banks and investment houses were doing, when they securitized mortgages, did credit default swaps, and let the bonus babies and their bosses drive their companies off a cliff. Where were Eric Cantor and Glenn Beck when that was happening? Obama didn't cause this crisis, and he wasn't the problem. Bush and his party were. Obama's the solution; that's why he was elected. The public should be reminded that unless we're prepared to side with the same Washington crowd that created the problem, we'd better let the guy we hired to fix the mess get on with the business of doing so. That's a message that will eventually buffer the president from the worst of this politically promoted populist delirum.