In less than a year, we're back to square one.
Just a few days after ascending the throne, still coasting on the momentum of his campaign, Obama signed a massive bailout bill into law.
At about the same time, Obama chose to go to war with Wall Street fat cats. The time was right. Fearing that the economy was sinking like the Titanic, America was ready to take the fat cats down.
Riding on that wave of populist angst, Obama punished financial industry executives, many of whom were simply cleaning up a mess not of their own making. The move was a semi-successful attempt to distract the angry mob from the notion that Obama & Friends were saving the skins of the very same scoundrels who were thought to have been responsible for trashing the economy in the first place.
With the lukewarm success of his early scapegoating, Obama moved on to an alphabet soup of fall guys: America, Bush, Cambridge Police, Doctors, Fox News, the GOP, Israel, Kanye West, Limbaugh, Media Coverage, the New York Times, Scare Tactics, Tea Parties, Victory, etc.
Now, less than a year into his rule, Obama is right back where he started: criticizing successful, law-abiding members of the financial industry. "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street," Obama said in an interview on CBS's "60 Minutes" program on Sunday. (Judging from the results of his first year in office, Obama did not run for office to help anyone.)
At this point, Obama has become well acquainted with the law of diminishing returns. Ever since the White House called on Americans to turn on each other in the fishy email initiative, White House stigmatization has lost its political potency. In fact, for some, feuding with Obama became quite profitable.
If you haven't been called out by Obama yet, be patient. He'll probably get to you at some point in the next 3-7 years.
