Populism Is Not Fungible

At first the political import of the AIG bonus scandal looked scary indeed, especially if you were watching the cable hysteria: President Obama was allowing the same moneymen who had driven the world economy off a cliff skip away with million-dollar bonuses after he'd already committed billions in taxpayer funds to prop up their rotten Ponzi scheme of a company. At last, a prairie fire of populist rage that would soon scorch the White House! Republicans redux!

But really: The idea that populist rage aimed at corporate greed is in any way a threat to Barack Obama is one of the funniest memes the mainstream media has promoted since the notion that he was a "socialist" or "palling around with terrorists," or that old knee-slapper that he "isn't black enough," all of which talk-show bloviators once rated as "serious problems."

Let's get a grip, and focus on the real politics of the AIG scandal and not the "optics," as the pundits love to call them. Today you have politicians of all stripes--from Barney Frank and Andrew Cuomo to Mike Pence and Chuck (Seppuku-san) Grassley--trying to commandeer grassroots anger over the exhorbitant bonuses white men at the top of American business have been paying themselves. That is, we have left, right, and center trying to outdo one another in opposing the fundamental inequities of the capitalist system.

Whenever you want to know which way a political issue cuts, just ask, "Whose coalition does it split?" Look at this clip of "up-and-coming" conservative House Minority Whip Eric Cantor vowing: I'll go anywhere, do anything, waterboard myself if necessary--anything to get this money back to the people. Uh, at least, until Cantor's asked to really put his vote on the line:

That was Thursday morning; by the end of the day Cantor did vote for the Democratic bill to tax back the bonuses. Though only after anti-tax fanatic Grover Norquist sounded the all-clear for harried GOPers to support the bill (with the fig-leaf condition that they somehow cut taxes or spending somewhere else--as if the minority party could do any such thing). The bill passed 328 to 93, with Republicans split 87/85 against. Only six House Democrats broke ranks to vote against taxing the bonuses.

As Nate Silver on FiveThirtyEight.com shows, the media's March madness over the AIG bonuses began neutrally enough, in a Washington Post story, but it was liberal blogs that really ran with it, dismayed by the brush-off the issue got from Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner. It was only then that the mainstream media, with helpful talking points put out by rightwing bloggers, tried to spin the AIG bonuses into trouble for Geithner and, by association, for the president himself.

What this episode may prove is that you can't always fight fire with fire. The GOP has been trying to start a backfire of rage against their own most privileged constituents--the coddled bankers and hedge-fund finaglers who financed W's administration in return for complete deregulation--in the hope of saving themselves even as the flames consumed Obama's credibility with the people. That's so counterintuitive you can only marvel at the MSM's attempt to make it stick.

In the end, the Senate and House Republicans will wind up looking more like reckless capitalists than does Obama. His series of public appearances--Leno, a primetime press conference--will, like his masterful townhall meeting in Costa Mesa on Wednesday, answer, yet again, the question: Who would you rather have lead the country, much less manage the economy--Barack Obama or John Boehner (or Mitch McConnell, Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, take your pick)?

This is by no means a free pass for Obama. Geithner and Summers might very well get cindered if this fire rages on. But is that going to hurt Obama, or make him get tougher on the banks? Stepping in it, as Geithner did, might even force the Treasury secretary, if not out of office, then to the left on the financial crisis, where the debate seems to be trending anyway.

Besides, if Obama's team can't find Fahrenheit 451 on their own, New York AG Andrew Cuomo, who's going after Merrill Lynch and AIG with subpoenas, might well turn up the heat on all of them. Obama's toughest opposition will inevitably come from within the Democratic Party and probably from his left.

The media always makes the rightwing jihad look more forbidding than it really is--remember how, according to Sam Donaldson, Bill Clinton was going to be out of office by the end of the week that the Lewinsky story first broke? Naturally, there is always a risk that at some point the right will be able to turn the tide against Obama, with this or any of the thousands of other financial landmines buried in our future. But the president has a kind of insurance (a credit default swap?) against that possibility: There's no one to take advantage of a major crack in Obama's popularity, because the right is eating its own.

The instinctive yet self-defeating excuse-fest started with CNBC's Rick Santelli, who said Tuesday, in effect, that we should just give the AIG highrollers their $165 million in bonuses because that's nada compared to the billions that truly greedy subprime mortgage "losers" will receive from Obama. Then Limbaugh, true to his Ann Rand-y principles, said, "I am all for the AIG bonuses," and blasted Dems as a "lynch mob"... "ginned up by the Obama administration." Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity soon followed suit.

The right, pols and media, are having an awkward time squaring their free-market obsession with the populist rage they know they should at least pretend to feel. But nobody mimics fake rightwing rage better than Stephen Colbert, who in his Opposite Day character makes clear, again, why we should see this contretemps for what it really is:

Comments (10)

1. "That was Thursday morning; by the end of the day Cantor did vote for the Democratic bill to tax back the bonuses."

   Cantor betting on the ADD of the average Republican baser.

   Posted by Mask at 03/19/2009 @ 10:40pm

2. well it seems the republican party is in a pickle indeed. the usual conservative populist whipping posts, flag burning, the war on christmas, the martyr making "persecution" of rightwing fundyvangelist christianity, or whatever distracting non issue they get all faux ragey and populist over....

   don't amount to a hill of beans anymore now that even the most ignorant jaywalking marching moron has kind of awakened...

   what to do, what to do?

   the world of yesterday is over and the republicans just keep bending all reality into orthodox, satano-aynrando, ideologically acceptable interpretations.

   funny how any ideology, adhered to too tightly, seems to have the result of lowering IQ, in that the interpretations of the hard core ideologue must be filtered and refracted through the lenses of the ideology in question...

   and when such interpretive output clashes wigh observed reality...

   time to start pounding those circles into squares, buddy...

   well...at least its friday...

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 03/20/2009 @ 07:46am

3. Aside from the fact that the echo chamber media has tried its best to vilify the new media and political put down word, "populism". the masses have claimed the word proudly. Yes sir, your honor, I'm one of the dirty finger nail populist that have been picking up your garbage and cleaning up your sewage. They don't want to release the names of the gluttons that have ripped off the working labor class for fear that the great unwashed will do them violence. That hasn't been my experience. We, the masses have been so cowed by the gated community plutocrats that we just want to see what gluttony looks like. I suspect that Liddy invented that bull crappy about the piano wire just so we wouldn't see what greed looks like. I still don't believe that the claw back tax bill will violate the "bill of attainder" article of the constitution. There isn't much case law on the subject. We aren't putting them to death just acting in good faith as corporate owners of the company. Look, corporate media ditto heads, you and your handlers have won the class war. We give up, at least come out in the sun light so we can see who the heck you are.

   Posted by julien38 at 03/20/2009 @ 10:01am

4. Posted by snowball666 at 03/20/2009 @ 08:42am | ignore this person | warn this person

   its funny...you look at the hardcore deterministic "scientific" canon of discovered axioms of the worst of hardcore socialist ideologues...so often ridiculed by...

   the hardcore determinist objectivist (as opposed to "objective") ideologue who reflexively coughs up comfortable, well rehearsed, satano-aynrando sacred axioms and revealed gospel...to counter the opposite...

   third way...pragmatism and scientific rigor applied to economics and sociology...

   Posted by ibbleblibble at 03/20/2009 @ 10:25am

5. High School Sophomore Psychology, I'm an Abe Maslow man myself. All that Harvard Berrhus Frederick Skinner, Pavlov garbage really scares me to hell. Old B.F. has so infected the business and political world that we have needlessly declared war on and killed innocent people and destroyed cultures in the name of greed, falsely called democracy. Soaking ones finger in purple ink doesn't create a democracy, especially when its done at the point of an automatic weapon or an armed drone. What we have really created is about a century's worth of hate. I knew we had lost the war in Iraq when the media accidently showed that poor frustrated GI shooting a dying prisoner in a Mosque.

   Posted by julien38 at 03/20/2009 @ 10:29am

6. Put corporations back where they belong!

   Posted by snowball666 at 03/20/2009 @ 10:38am | ignore this person | warn this person

   Thank you Sir or Madam

   Posted by julien38 at 03/20/2009 @ 11:00am

7. hey kids, don't expect too much from the supine american people, who cannot even muster a protest, a la france, never mind a general strike.

   they have been too scared and too complacent for the last eight years, else Bush would have been tarred and feathered, instead of handed four more years.

   Posted by emile duBois at 03/20/2009 @ 2:45pm

8. I say let the AIG crooks have their bonus, to be paid when they get out of jail in about twenty years or so.

   why are they criminals? because they sold 400 billion in insurance, when all they had was 200 billion in assets.

   and nobody noticed?

   Posted by emile duBois at 03/20/2009 @ 3:21pm

9. How about nationalizing AIG and making the employees of the insurance dept gov employees offering health insurance and/or health care for all Americans? Sell off or otherwise dispose of all the non-insurance so-called assets. We own it already. Why not make AIG work for us? Hmmmmm?

   Posted by onlyeye at 03/20/2009 @ 7:30pm

10. First you need to know two things. #1 the difference between a retention bonus, and a performance bonus. #2 these people were employees doing the job they were hired to do. They did not violate any laws.

    AIG negotiated compensation contracts with 400 employees that contained $450 million in retention bonuses. These contracts did not require them make a profit, only to do the work. Why do you think that AIG agreed to pay these people $450 million? AIG thought they were getting them on "the cheap". AIG thought they would make $40 billion. They just happen to loose $40 billion "The Best Laid Plans" The consensus seems to be the employees should not be paid for their work because they were greedy and lost a lot of AIG's money. AIG should get their money back or the government should since they now own AIG.

    Can you really not see the implications of the US Government targeting and terrorizing these employees? Using the tax code to invalidating these contractual obligations because it is politically expedient?

    Congress has bigger problems. They are "CLUELESS"

    Posted by billyboy_AZ at 03/21/2009 @ 8:03pm