Pitchforks as Policy

Easy, I remember another instance that gave me pause about this Administration's competence.

It was right at the start, when the executive pay scandal first arose, and the President called in the major TARP recipient Banks to lecture them on reforming their compensation policies. At one point, the Bank CEO's offered that executive compensation was a complex affair, that the Bank's were competing for talent from around the world. And our President responded, "The public isn't buying that...My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

There was a sense I had at the time that this was not an analysis of the American public's mood as much as a threat about what this Administration was capable of, a threat I thought quite ridiculous. Don't get me wrong; there was something cold blooded and chilling about the President's implication of public violence against the Banks, and I am sure the Bank CEO's took the message to heart. But I was also all but incredulous that the President thought that he had such power over the American public, and also that such banana republic type threats had any place in American politics.

In retrospect, it is even more clear that the President and his staff have a blind spot about themselves and their power, owing to the hubris you mentioned. They really believed, back in April of this year, that they could move the public in any way they wanted, even unto pitchfork waving mobs. They thought they could send ACORN out with its fake protesters, order up some demagogic headlines from the Major Media, inundate the Internet with shocked outrage from MoveOn.org, and the public would respond like little puppets to their manipulations.

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But American's are just not pitchfork kind of people. More than a 150 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville said something to the effect that Americans would enthusiastically congregate and applaud the latest public rabble rouser, only to quietly disperse when it appeared the speaker intended them to actually do something.

As you said, this Administration is clueless. It is clueless about the American character, about the American culture, and about how a President functions in our Republic. And it is clueless about these things because it is essentially parochial: this Administration thinks the customs of a political backwater like Chicago are universal truths.