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Barack Obama is our first post-baby-boom president. He was supposed to usher in a new era, where we wouldn't have to fight the social battles of the 1960s all over again. Instead, we are now apparently going to fight the battles of the 1930s.
The Huffington Post is today reporting that Democratic Representative Bruce Braley will (later this week) be announcing the formation of the Populist Caucus in Congress. The group will initially have 21 members, all House Democrats. From the full article:
This is an outrage. To put this in perspective, this is more money than the annual budget for the Department of Transportation. It is more than we pay for the Department of Education. It is the size of the Departments of Justice, Energy, State, and the Interior -- combined. It is an amount bigger than the GDP of all but about 60 countries in the world. Even in Washington, this ain't pocket change, in other words. It's a lot of money. And it seems to have vanished.
President Obama has been failing a crucial test in the past few weeks. In the first (and possibly most important, at least for a while) legislative struggle in Congress, President Obama's stimulus package has had its ups and downs. But what is truly missing is one entire side of this debate. Where are the cheerleaders for the stimulus package?
While I think a growing populist rage is indeed possible in this country at this point, I don't quite think we're there yet -- and I really don't think most Washington politicians would know how to ride that wave even if it did appear. Because, from Obama on down, Democrats know how to stoke the fires of populist rage, but what they propose doing about it usually falls far, far short of what I would call "populism."
Our new president has had a pretty good first week in office. In his "first 168 hours" (for those of you who love arbitrary timelines for the "honeymoon" period), he has made good on quite a few campaign promises, sent an envoy to the Middle East on a "listening tour," and pushed his stimulus package in Congress. All around, an impressive first week by any standard.
Taking that last one first, the status in Washington is fast approaching Officially Freaking Out (in the tradition of acronym-crazy D.C., I will refer to this from now on as "OFO") as they contemplate the city being overrun by Inauguration visitors. To put this in perspective, Washington's population is around 600,000 people. Estimates of the crowd which has even now begun descending on the city range from one million up to three million. Three million people is five times the population of the city. For comparison, take the population of the town or city you live in and multiply it by five. Now picture that many out-of-towners arriving for an event. It's like Woodstock descending on a small town, in other words. Or, if you prefer, a Medieval siege. No word yet on where to park the catapults and trebuchets.
Three names suggest themselves in this category. The first, sad to say, is Sarah Palin. While some dismiss her with the term (which she herself uttered on Saturday Night Live) "Caribou Barbie," my educated guess is that we have not seen the last of Alaska's governor on the national stage. Because while the list of things Palin lacks is long and daunting, she has one star quality which may prove to be strong enough to cancel all the rest out -- charisma. A politician can learn about such mundane things as world events and how to speak with political finesse, but charisma can't really be learned -- it's more of an innate quality. And Palin's got it. For those laughing at the prospect of Sarah Palin ever reappearing, I caution that when Ronald Reagan first ran for president, we all laughed at him, too. An actor becoming president? Pre-pos-terous! So don't underestimate charisma, or Palin's ambition.
I would suggest that no employee of any Wall Street firm getting taxpayer money can make any more than a union autoworker. That would be a good place to start from.
This is not a follow up to what I wrote last Friday, because this isn't about Illinois Governor Blagojevich's "crude" language. Instead, I write today about Blaggy's crude tactics. Because I'm kind of having a hard time condemning him for doing almost the same thing as what other politicians do more successfully (and completely "legally") with a wink and a nod. There's a game, and there are certain rules to the game. Blaggy went a bit too far, and was caught. He is now paying the price. But what he "got caught" at isn't that all that different from what many (if not most) politicians -- of both parties -- do.