The Other Chicago School
Here’s the President’s problem. It’s not just that he is far to the left of the average American. It’s that for all his high-mindedness he is operating in a different ethical scheme than most Americans—and he does not seem to know it.
What the President really seems to regard as the defense of high principle Americans increasingly see as the most raw machine politics, replete with party payoffs.
This moral dissonance increasingly imparts a sense of the thuggishness to the administration’s communications. Even last night’s cordial and cheerfully delivered speech was colored by the administration’s astonishingly crude behavior in recent weeks.
First there was the attempt to save the health care bill with political payoffs so blatant even the White House’s defenders could offer only the pathetic apologia “that’s how politics works.” Unfortunately this defense was even more damaging than the payoffs. Even if most Americans accept that’s how politics often does work, they are appalled by pols who seem unashamed of it.
Most perfectly illustrating the morals of the post-modern pol, who shows not a trace of guilt at using power to punish enemies and reward friends were the last minute maneuvers to exempt union members from the tax on “gold-plated” health plans while imposing it on the rest of us. Can these people possibly think they can restore confidence in the economy by turning the tax code into an enemies list?
Just days later Mr. Obama proposed his “responsibility fee” to be levied on banks managing more than $50 billion in assets so as to recapture more TARP money. As roughly everyone sentient American immediately noticed, however, the fee would not only apply to any number of banks that never got any TARP money, but would not touch either GM or Chrysler neither of which have repaid a dime.
Is there any possible explanation other than the automakers employ hundreds of thousands of loyal Democrats?
With all this in mind last night how could one hear, for instance, Mr. Obama’s long litany of all the various special interests to whom he had extended special tax breaks through the stimulus bill as other than the bragging of a ward boss. Should there be different tax rates for every American depending on how pleasing one’s behavior is to the incumbent?
Tax breaks for small businesses that create jobs might have sounded attractive. Except then one remembered all those Americans who earned places on the President’s enemies list, alongside Joe the Plumber, for the crime of making more than $250,000 per year or just wanting to. Except for the lawyers nearly all those people are small business owners. Most of their firms are organized as “S” corporations or LLCs. That makes their personal tax returns almost indistinguishable from their companies’ income statements, and as such a direct measure of their ability to keep their businesses funded and afloat. These are the gritty entrepreneurs the President praised repeatedly in his speech, who, if they also have the bad luck to live in a high tax state, would be pushed perilously close to the 50 percent bracket under the President’s regime.
Then there were the bizarre departures from reality that made up so much of the 70 minutes. Is the President the last person in America who thinks the stimulus program created anything like $800 billion worth of jobs?
In the whole seventy minutes, however, surely the most bizarre moment was when Mr. Obama held up China and India as examples of nations that are “not waiting” to “revamp their economies.” No indeed. They are revamping away, far away, from the thuggish socialism that crippled both for 50 years. Maybe the President should consider doing a little revamping himself.
AR and RV
Tags: Andrew Redleaf, capitalism, Congress, Obama, Regulation, Richard Vigilante, state of the union, Whitebox
