Chicago is as Chicago Does

Here is the situation. You are the President, and you have seen in your first year the failure or near failure of three signature reforms, National Healthcare, Cap and Trade, and Stimulus. Your poll numbers among Independents are plummeting, and your base is deserting you like rats on a sinking ship.

You decide you can salvage something of your first year by passing what would seem to be a popular reform: a brand new, of-the-people and for-the-people bureaucracy, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Critical to your success, of course, is getting the financial services industry on your side in the coming political debate.

What do you do? How about a pre-emptive strike against bank executives, by going on 60 minutes last night and calling them "fat cats?" Then, in case they don't quite get the message, why don't you up the ante with a broadside accusing them of being ungrateful for the help America gave them last year? And finally, be sure and accuse them, erroneously, of flooding Washington with lobbyists to block regulatory reform.

This is not how to win friends and influence people. This is what political science wonks call "demagoguery." It is apparently the only way the Obami know how to govern, which explains a great deal about this worst of years for a newly installed President.

As I said here, these people are just not very smart about national politics, primarily because, as Whit said here, they are so parochial. The Obami think "the customs of a political backwater like Chicago are universal truths."