Barack Obama

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's report couldn't come at a better time. At a moment when it seems that Washington would rather forget what happened two years ago, it documents the opportunism, bad judgment, and criminality that crashed the world's economy once - and could again at any time. An interconnected web of Wall Street criminality, discredited ideology, and politicians chasing big money - along with a surprising amount of executive incompetence - has caused continued suffering for millions. At a time when the nation's capital is convinced that CEOs need appeasing rather than policing, the FCIC report is a badly needed return to reality.

Wall Street executives weren't mentioned in the State of the Union or the Republican response. But their actions caused this crisis, and they can't be ignored politely like tipsy uncles at a family wedding. The only way to prevent the next crisis is by understanding the last one - and then taking the right actions.

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Here's an interesting interpretation of Winning the Future:

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The latest Democracy Corps/Campaign For America's Future poll on jobs and the economy has a clear message for the President and his party: Stand up for jobs, and protect Social Security and Medicare. The results couldn't be clearer. Yet it's still rumored that the President's State of the Union will emphasize deficit reduction over job creation, and the White House has refused to assure worried Democrats that the President won't also propose cuts to Social Security.

How many polls will it take to convince the White House that this is political suicide? How many expert analyses will it take to persuade them that its premature to make deficits the priority when the country desperately needs jobs and economic growth?

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In an open letter to the President this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders mentioned "worriesome reports" that the President is planning to cut Social Security. These reports don't come out of the blue. They're the culmination of a months-long campaign. The White House has been privately signalling for months that it was leaning in that direction, and now the sky over Washington is darkening with trial balloons floating up from Pennsylvania Avenue.

Before you make such a disastrous and unwarranted move, Mr. President, there's someone I think you should meet. Actually, you may have run into him before: He's a skinny guy with an keen analytical mind and a gift for brilliant oratory. Sound familiar? He ran for President last time around, and he had some very sensible things to say about Social Security: more »

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Mr. President, you moved a nation today with your words in Tucson. "Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame," you said, "let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together."

You also said this: "It's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds."

Two weeks from now the State of the Union address will be an opportunity to bring Americans together - Americans who have been bitterly divided by party loyalty and ideology, but who stand united in their support for the social programs that have improved our lives for the past seventy-five years. On that night, will they know that somebody has heard them? Will they feel that someone is talking to them? Will they feel they have a voice inside the Capitol rotunda, in a city where they sometimes seem to have been forgotten? more »

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Wall Street is widely despised by an American public that lives with the consequences of bank behavior every day. The President and the party were once widely trusted by the public to rein in the banks and save the economy, but that reputation's been tarnished by the fact that they're now seen as overly cozy with the big financial players. And who can forget those visitor logs that showed just how entwined the Administration and big business have always been?

With all the traffic between this Administration and Wall Street, maybe this week's Presidential appointees should be sworn in on a round -trip ticket for the Acela Express.

The choice of a JPMorgan Chase exec to run the White House operation seems like a bad move under the circumstances, and it probably is. But if Bill Daley took three simple words to heart, and had the President's blessing to act on them, it could change everything. more »

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In "All Together Now: There Is No Deficit/Debt Problem,” I warned against the message calling for deficit reduction that the President will probably deliver in his State of the Union Address next month. more »

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Uh-oh. David Brooks is offering the President advice again. Since we're told that Brooks is one of President Obama's favorite columnists, there's always the chance that his latest idea will gain traction in the White House. Brooks is smart, and he's a good salesman, so his ideas may resonate with a lot of other powerful Democrats, too.

That would be a very, very bad thing indeed. He's using new catchphrases to dress up some very bad, very old, and very unpopular ideas.

Two old paradigms ain't worth forty cents.

The Brooks proposal may sound fresh, but it's really only a mash-up of two stale notions: That "bipartisanship" happens whenever well-heeled Democratic and Republican politicians cut a deal, and that "transformation" is always exciting and positive - no matter what you're transforming from or to.

Brooks is still thinking in clichéd, outmoded "left" vs. "right" terms. Like so many others in Washington, he doesn't realize that the world has changed. The Grand Compromise he's offering isn't between "liberals" and "conservatives," but between most Americans - Republicans and independents as well as Democrats, Tea Partiers as well as progressives - and the tiny band of Washington insiders that have hijacked that city's thinking with ideas they continue to peddle as "bipartisan."

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Republican hostage-takers got President Obama to go along with their tax cuts for the wealthy by threatening to raise taxes on the middle class and blocking even modest stimulus funds for our struggling economy. more »

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Last Friday the White House partied like it was 1999. It was fascinating to see Bill Clinton back at the podium, and it's a pleasure to see a master of the medium at work. But the Administration's latest moves raise serious concerns about the future of Obama's Presidency. Clinton played the "centrist" angle brilliantly in the 1990s, artfully fusing Republican and Democratic positions and rescuing his own political fortunes. But times have changed, even if Washington's illusions have not.

Today the country's real center - the commonly-held set of goals and aspirations shared by Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike - has never been farther from the narrow right-leaning viewpoint that's still being peddled as a "centrism." If the White House and other Democrats buy into that illusion, as they seem to be doing, they'll lose the country. more »

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