For the record, this blog is not an Obama Criticism-free Zone

From the Department of Great Minds Think Alike, this is why I'm becoming more and more useless as a political blogger.   For close to two weeks I've been tinkering with the draft of a post laying out my disappointments and satisfactions with the Obama Administration.  The post, if it ever gets finished, will include this:

I think [the President] wasted too many of his first hundred days trying to save the banking industry, as opposed to trying to help people who'd been royally fucked by the banksters.  And on the economic front in general, he's been ill-served by his own choice of top advisors.  Tim Geithner and Larry Summers were terrible picks, for a lot of reasons that can be summed up, kindly, as they both lack the common touch.  Neither one seems aware that for most people the economy isn't about the careers of Ivy League MBAs and Summers strikes me as being absolutely contemptuous of the notion that every question or problem isn't about the brilliance of Larry Summers.  In fact, I can't think of anyone in a high-profile job in this administration, except maybe Hilda Solis, who seems aware of, let alone concerned about, the worries and cares of ordinary human beings.  I can't think of anybody besides Solis (I don't count Hillary Clinton because as Secretary of State has a very different sort of job) who didn't come out of a corporate suite who didn't come out of a university faculty lounge or a law office.  There doesn't appear to be anybody whose approach to a problem doesn't begin and end with a theory, as opposed to a plan.   I never expected Barack Obama to be the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt, but I'm still dismayed that here are no hard-headed reformers in his Cabinet who can demand his attention like Frances Perkins could with FDR,, no farmer-intellectual-scientists like Henry Wallace---Tom Vilsack, the first Agriculture Secretary from Iowa since Wallace is a lawyer---nobody who made a career helping people in the streets and the alleys and the bars and the churches like Harry Hopkins.  After the President's own, the public faces of this Administration are Geithner's, Clinton's, and Robert Gates', the bankster's kickable puppy and the two Cabinet members least concerned with domestic affairs.  It may not be true, but it sure looks as though this Administration doesn't have our day to day problems much on its collective mind.

In his Sunday op-ed this week, Frank Rich writes:

His first questionable post-victory step was to assemble an old boys’ club of Robert Rubin protégés and Goldman-Citi alumni as the White House economic team, including a Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, who failed in his watchdog role at the New York Fed as Wall Street’s latest bubble first inflated and then burst. The questions about Geithner’s role in adjudicating the subsequent bailouts aren’t going away, and neither is the angry public sense that the fix is still in. We just learned that nine of those bailed-out banks — which in total received $175 billion of taxpayers’ money, but as yet have repaid only $50 billion — are awarding a total of $32.6 billion in bonuses for 2009.

Rich and I have been thinking along the same lines, something it seems to me we do a lot.  In fact, for a while now I've been paranoid that Rich has been reading my blog and cribbing ideas and even phrases for his column. Sometimes I've become almost convinced that he's hacked my computer in order to read my notes for upcoming posts, which is really crazy because I keep my notes in an actual paper notebook.   Today's piece should put an end to my delusions.  All along, it's just been a case of Great Minds Think Alike, except that one of those minds is just that much greater, thinks more quickly, writes faster and more succinctly, has a deadline to meet, and not incidentally gets paid big bucks to to meet those deadlines.

At any rate, if you haven't read it already, read all of Rich's column, Is Obama Punking Us?  It's filled with thoughts I haven't had, wouldn't have had, but should have had, and phrases I couldn't have come up with even if they paid me the big bucks too.

Related:  Ian Welsh is feeling gloomy about a bunch of things.

Comments

[Marianne Molleur]

Lance,

I guess Elizabeth Warren doesn't count as she works for Congress? Her profile's as high as Solis' is.

If you've never seen her talk on bankruptcy, I recommend you check it out on YouTube.

She's one of the few with any platform who gives voice to the ruination facing working class and many who call themselves middle class.

[Lance]

Marianne, thank God for Warren, but, yeah, she doesn't count in this instance because she works for Congress.

[lina]

I applaud the Obama administration for saving the banking industry (as odious as it is) and preventing a recession from becoming a depression. He could go Hoover or FDR, and he chose FDR. Thank you President Obama.

[Sunny jim]

Frank Rich vs. Matt Taibbi as moral arbiters of what Obama's supporters are feeling and thinking? I trust my gut, and trust Taibbi in a heartbeat. Lance, I love this blog and am hesitant to criticize, but you and some of your readers were all wet the other day when you did a hit job on Taibbi and dismissied him as a full-of-shit clown.
Again, this is just my opinion, but I am connecting some dots: In 2000, no one mocks Al Gore's sighs and eye-rolling more than Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd in the Times and George Bush ends up as president. Years later, Rich is a leading Bush critic. Then in '03 and '04 the New York Times completely flubs its responsibilities to call out Bush and Cheney's lies that got us into Iraq, and now Rich points to the retired generals who shilled for the war on tv?
As last October's bailouts begin, Taibbi - writing mainly for Rolling Stone - starts jumping out of his seat, throwing objects around the room, cursing and swearing. Outraged? Hell, he's ready to get out the torches and pitchforks. His invective-laced diatribes continue as he "reports" on AIG and Goldman Sachs.
Was Frank Rich equally outraged from the outset of all this? If he was I must have missed it. Now Rich conjectures on those "disillusioned" and "disturbed" Obama supporters. Yeah, OK, whatever.
Does Taibbi go over the top when he calls out Paulson and the Wall Street CEO's, the Immelts and Jack Welshes? Yeah he does, and he won't win the academic awards that Rich might. But I'll trust Taibbi hands down to maintain his MORAL ground.

[Lance]

Jim, Criticism of the blogger is why God created comment sections. I admit I was in a bad mood when I wrote about Taibbi last week but I did say that enjoy his writing and often agree with him. My point was that he's giving his opinions, which is fine. I was just tired of reading other bloggers pushing his opinions as they were facts. Rich has come a long way since 2000, unlike most of his colleagues. I can't help trusting his opinions more than Taibbi's because, as I said in this post, Rich often seems to have stolen mine. :)

[Lance]

PS. Don't know if you saw this in my Twitter Updates in the sidebar: "Not the biggest Taibbi fan going, but he sure makes the right people mad. http://snurl.com/pj7e6 h/t @jayrosen_nyu"

[Sunny Jim]

Thanks - the Columbia Journalism Review link is a must read. The title says it all: 'Don't Dismiss Taibbi'. I agree: over the top or not, Rolling Stone or otherwise, he is doing some real and all-too-rare investigative journalism. The freedom Taibbi has to call one of the Masters of the Universe an asshole is the same freedom that lets him stay outraged and keep that higher moral ground.

[Iamspartacus]

You are not paranoid. I sometimes think Rich is stealing from my blog. And NOBODY reads my blog.