The Political Whore

By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor

Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.

As the Dow Jones Industrials and the S&P 500 continued their dismal descent last week, conservative commentators appeared proud that they alone have deciphered the reason why – it’s President Obama’s economic proposals, of course.

From the Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial on Friday:

What’s worrying about the plunge in equities since January 2, and especially in the last week since Mr. Obama released his radical budget, is that it has come amid the unveiling of the President’s policy agenda. Equity prices have reacted to those proposals by signaling that they expect a much deeper and longer recession.

And on the next page, former Bush 41 Economic Advisor Michael Boskin wrote under the doomsday headline “Obama’s Radicalism is Killing the Dow:”

It’s hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president’s policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis.

And so on. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly led off virtually every one of his “Talking Points” segments by also blaming the president’s “Socialist spending sprees” as further evidence that Wall Street is not impressed.

But is this really correct? One political theorist laughed when I asked him this last week.

Michael Lind is perhaps best known as being a neo-conservative who switched jerseys back in the mid 1990’s. Now a fellow at the new American Foundation, he slammed the idea that Obama’s policies have had anything to do with the Dow sliding down to 1996 numbers.

“I find it amusing to learn that all of these conservative Republican investors just in order to spite President Obama are foregoing vast opportunities to enrich themselves to buy good stocks today. I don’t believe that at all. This is not a typical recession. I think we’re seeing the collapse of a super bubble that began in 1982 to 2007/2008.

You saw a giant bubble, and the tech bubble and housing bubble were inside it. So this is a generational collapse taking place, and so to blame it on Obama (or Bush for that matter) is missing the point. This is an epochal event.”

Lind wrote an essay on Salon.com last week that accused Obama of falling into line of what he calls the neoliberal attitude.

In a nutshell, Lind argues the neoliberalism of the ’80s and ’90s was personified by Bill Clinton’s triangulation style politics, and a shift of its base from organized labor to the financial elites of Wall Street.

In his Salon.com essay, Lind accuses Obama of being too timid, and of getting poor economic advice. “We’re in a transformational moment, but we don’t have a transformative presidency. I think he’s a brilliant and gifted leader. I have great confidence in Obama, but I think his economic team is too wedded to this bubble economy that has now burst.”

Lind points his finger specifically at Lawrence Summers, the head of the White House’s National Economic Council for the President, as “believing in this discredited 80’s idea that the markets are self-regulating.”

Similar criticism has come Obama’s way from NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, who wrote last Friday that he believes the administration is diddling with halfhearted measures to deal with the banking crises and is putting off the inevitable – nationalizing some banks.

Meanwhile, the cable news world was all atwitter last week (that’s not to be confused about Twitter. Heard about that recently?) on the question of who runs the Republican Party.

Although this issue may have some relevance, I really find it to be to perhaps be a part of the stimulus bill I missed. You know, the part that insures that cable news networks have plenty of filler to talk about …even though there’s an economic, housing and banking crises to the likes we haven’t seen in perhaps 7 decades!

Why is it important for Republicans to have a leader right now, 4 months after having had their clocks cleaned for the 2nd straight election? Yes, the party is asunder, and frankly, simply not that popular these days.

But it’s where the party goes next that will decide their relevance in the future, not who is leading it. Certainly not in March of 2009.

After John Kerry lost in 2004, Democrats were disheartened, angry, and broken spirited. That led to a fight between the grassroots (which later became known as the netroots) and the Washington establishment.

The best writing to document that fissure was captured in Matt Bai’s book, The Argument.

It’s a natural progression that will inevitably take time to follow. Of course, you don’t hear too many new ideas these days (save for lower taxes) from the right. You hear a lot about how this country needs to go back to “Ronald Reagan principles”, and how Newt Gingrich is still the man of a thousand ideas.

But the Republicans are being branded (and playing the roll nicely) of the Party of No. That’s unimaginative, but ultimately might work, if the economy is still stalled a year from now. (However, you may remember how the GOP tagged Senate Minority leader Tom Daschle with the sobriquet “obstructionist”, and it seemed to work).

The winner in this silly debate of course is Rush Limbaugh. Just last year, the radio personality signed a staggering eight year $400 million dollar contract with Premiere Radio Networks. And after 20 years of national syndication, he remains a dominate voice doing political talk. In the age of podcasting, Ipods, satellite and Internet streaming, the fact that he still can become the focus in the national conversation says something about his broadcasting skills.

It also shows that you can say some hideous, hurtful and insensitive things, and get rewarded for it.

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