April 27, 2009
During the April 21 – 24 timeframe, ABC News and The Washington Post conducted a poll to ascertain President Obama’s approval rating. The poll revealed that 69 percent of Americans favor the job performance of our new President. Fifty percent of those polled believe that the country is on the right track (compared with 19 percent just before Obama’s inauguration). This seemed like a particularly strong showing since, just one week before this poll began, we saw the anti-taxation “tea parties” that had been promoted by Fox News.
A recent article by Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin for Politico revealed that in some states, the “tea parties” have helped energize the Republican base:
“There is a sense of rebellion brewing,” said Katon Dawson, the outgoing South Carolina Republican Party chairman, who cited unexpectedly high attendance at anti-tax “tea parties” last week.
As the article by Smith and Martin pointed out, this “rebellion” is taking place at exactly the time when many Republican Party leaders are tacking to the center and looking for someone like Utah Governor Jon Huntsman as a possible Presidential candidate for 2012. Nevertheless, as the article noted, rank-and-file Republicans outside of Washington have no desire to adopt more moderate views:
Within the party, conservative groups have grown stronger absent the emergence of any organized moderate faction.
Many of those comprising the Republican base appear to be motivated by antipathy toward the increasing acceptance of gay marriage, rather than by a reaction to all of the bailouts that have been taking place. In fact, I was surprised to observe, during the extensive “tea party” coverage, that none of the protesters were upset about the bank bailouts or Treasury Secretary “Turbo” Tim Geithner’s use of the Federal Reserve to manage the bank bailouts in furtherance of his attempts to avoid legislative oversight. I guess Fox News had not primed the protesters for that sort of outrage.
The Politico article by Smith and Martin reveals that “cultural issues” remain as the primary concern of the Republican base. Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich is trying to position himself as the next Republican standard bearer. Those touting the “sanctity of marriage” (including the Catholic Church) don’t seem particularly concerned that Newt has been married three times. Newt’s vision for the future is the same vision he was seeing almost twenty years ago: lower taxes. If others within the Republican Party have a broader vision and feel the need to expand their appeal to the voters, they can expect plenty of opposition from the party’s base — and therein lies the problem. Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman has written extensively about how the political primary system works to the benefit of political candidates with the most extreme views. This is because the only people who vote in political primaries are those with strongly held views and most of them come from the extremes. This is why wing-nuts such as Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann get nominated. In the absence of any strong moderate or centrist uprising within the Republican ranks, the GOP could be destined to find itself marginalized. It’s beginning to appear as though the only way for promising, new, centrist Republicans to get elected is to run as independents in the general elections. Once elected, they can reclaim the “high ground” within the party. In the mean time, Republican leaders are either unconcerned by or oblivious to the fact that they are painting themselves into a corner by continuing to pander to their base.
Geithner In The Headlights
April 30, 2009
Regular readers of this blog know that one of my favorite targets for criticism is Treasury Secretary “Turbo” Tim Geithner. My beef with him concerns his implementation and execution of programs designed to bail out banks at avoidable taxpayer risk and expense. Lately, we have seen a spate of wonderful articles vindicating my attitude about this man. One of my favorites was written by Gary Weiss for what was apparently the final issue of Conde Nast Portfolio. Mr. Weiss began the article discussing what people remember most about Geithner from the first time they saw him on television:
A few paragraphs later, Weiss recalled Geithner’s disastrous February 10 speech, intended to describe what was then known as the Financial Stability Plan — now referred to as the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP or pee-pip). Mr. Weiss recalled one of the reviews of that speech, wherein Geithner was described as having “the eyes of a shoplifter”. I later learned that it was MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle, who came up with that gem.
The most revealing story about Geithner appeared in the April 26 edition of The New York Times. This article, written by Jo Becker and Gretchen Morgenson, provided an understanding of Geithner’s background and how that has impacted his decisions and activities as Treasury Secretary. This piece has received plenty of attention from a variety of commentators, most notably for the in-depth investigation into Geithner’s “roots”. Becker and Morgenson summed-up their findings this way:
After a thorough explanation of how Geithner’s social and professional ties have influenced his thinking, the motivation behind Turbo Tim’s creation of the PPIP became clear:
Becker and Morgenson apparently went to great lengths to avoid characterizing Geithner as venal or corrupt. Nicholas von Hoffman said it best while discussing the Times article in The Nation:
Mr. von Hoffman was not so restrained while discussing the behavior of the bailed-out banks in an earlier piece he wrote for The Nation. In attempting to figure out why those banks did not get back into the business of lending money after the government-provided capital infusions, von Hoffman pondered over some possible reasons. First, he wondered whether the banks still lacked enough capital to back-up new loans. I liked his second idea better:
Renowned journalist Robert Scheer saw fit to praise Becker and Morgenson’s article in a piece he wrote for the Truthdig website (where he serves as editor). His analysis focused on how Geithner’s views were shaped while working for his mentors in the Clinton administration: Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. Scheer reminded us that these are the people who created “the policies that Clinton put in place and George W. Bush accelerated”:
Scheer noted how Turbo Tim has kept alive, what President Obama has often described as “the failed policies of the past eight years”:
Rather than just complaining about the problem, Mr. Scheer has suggested a solution: