Obama and the US Economy: Singing "Three Wheels on My Wagon"

In mid-1960s Britain, the New Christy Minstrels had a huge hit with “Three Wheels on My Wagon”, a song about a US pioneer family attacked by Cherokee Indians. As each verse begins, another wheel on the wagon goes missing. By the last verse, all the wheels are off the wagon, which is forced to stop. Regardless, the pioneers face death while “still singing a happy song”.

What if one substituted the Obama family for the pioneers and the Washington press corps for the Cherokees? Last week was a public relations disaster for Obama. The faux pas on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno about bowling and Special Olympians might appear small beer, even if it raises the uncomfortable question: could it be that Obama has a discriminatory bone in his body?

More significant is the furour over the bonuses for executives at the troubled financial company AIG.

Compared with the total of the Federal bailout, the sums for bonuses is trfiling, according to the President. However, when American people have insufficient funds to pay their bills, $200 million-plus is far from trivial. The President, according to the press, is giving the unfortunate impression that he's quite happy even as the wheels are coming off his wagon.

Obama wasn't always so blasé about trifling matters. In his book, Dreams From My Father, he describes his efforts on behalf of projects residents in a Chicago suburb. True, the problems, if looked at on a federal scale, were miniscule, but to those Project residents and organisers, the solutions offered through Obama’s efforts were immense.

Little things matter. Indeed, the Obama presidential campaign always paid great attention to detail. Micro seemed as important as macro.

So what happened to Obama last week? Was he overwhelmed by the enormity of his job? Has he become hypnotised by the “very cool” Air Force One and other trappings of the Presidency? Is he already surrounded by White House dobermans and inured to the needs and feelings of the little people?

I don’t think so but the President needs urgently to attend to his public relations.

On Sunday on the flagship TV news programme 60 Minutes, Obama talked about the AIG bonus: "I wasn't surprised by the intensity of the bonus debate and reaction to it. Our team wasn't surprised by it.” Instead, he emphasized that he would not govern out of anger. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been ordered to use every legal means to recover the bonus money from AIG. If it is not repaid, it will be deducted from the company's next bailout payment.

At the same time, the President is having to tread carefully in the AIG case. The House of Representatives has decided to extract its own revenge by passing a bill that would impose a tax of up to 90 percent on the AIG bonuses. Indeed, anyone making more than $250,000 a year who works for a financial institution receiving more than $5 million in bailout money would be liable to the tax. Obama, who was a constitutional law professor, has rightly expressed doubt as to this law’s constitutionality: "Well, I think that as a general proposition, you don't want to be passing laws that are just targeting a handful of individuals. I think you certainly don't want to use the tax code to punish people."

Obama's fulsome apology to Special Olympians should be sufficient to cope with the sideshow created by his appearance with Jay Leno. The AIG issue is more interesting. Irrespective of the President's correct reading of the law, if the Washington press corps successfully links Obama with the privileged in American society and nails him as unable to curb the worst excesses of Wall Street, his Presidency may descend into the disaster that few predicted and fewer, except died-in-the-wool Republicans, wanted.

Hopefully, Obama will soon put the wheels back on his wagon.

Comments

[Josh Mull]

Jeez man, you make it seem like we're teetering on the brink of disaster because Obama made an off-color joke on Leno. I'm not sure you're reading the American media, and the President's relationship with it, quite correctly.

First off, you certainly have a high opinion of the White House Press Corps. I mean, these are the same folks who brought us the Iraq War and then CONGRATULATED themselves for it. They're essentially the journalistic version of KGB prostitutes, selling their integrity and ethical responsibilities for the opportunity at access to power on behalf of their corporate sponsors. Not all of them are so depraved as your David Gregory's and whatnot, Helen Thomas comes to mind, but they're for the most part garbage and junk calories for the 24 cable networks.

And speaking of those cable networks, they're really the only ones who give a rat's ass about the whole "special olympics" thing. For your average citizen, no one in their right mind thinks Obama is Anti-retarded people or anything, it was just a bad joke. We all do it, you shrug and move on. Furthermore, it is ONLY the legacy media pundits who are making the connection that because Obama is joking on Leno he must have gone batshit crazy and is driving the economy into the ground. The week before they were bashing him because he was too depressing and negative. Surprise, now he's too happy and jovial! Clearly the Obama Presidency is RUINED!!! Here's a hint: THEY'RE PAID TO MAKE THIS SHIT UP!

And this is the big secret: No one in America believes ANYTHING. Our entire culture is so jaded by naked consumerism that Everyone just accepts that the television, the newspaper, the blog, everyone is just straight up lying to them. We explicitly understand that if a show or publication or artist we enjoy is not marketable, that is able to be linked with the selling of consumer products, that this thing will be crushed and unable to truly ever succeed in any sort of meaningful way. The shows on television and the articles in magazines are just commercials for the product advertisements we're really there to see. You say 60 Minutes is "the Flagship TV news program" ...yes, of the British Nuclear Fuels Corporation.

That dystopian image of mush brained slaves staring blankly at their glowing, comforting screens was just a luddite fear scenario. Reality is quite the opposite. Nobody trusts anyone, least of all the media. It took him literally drowning black people in the streets of America for the Media to figure out George W Bush may or may not kind of not have things entirely under control a little bit. Americans aren't stupid, we know these idiots are just selling air time and column inches, they're not providing any real truth or accountability.

And best of all, the Obama Administration understands this. That's why it tends to not deal very much at all with the tradition media gatekeepers and their 24 hour circle jerk pathology. What you call a Public Relations Disaster(tm) is nothing of the sort. Americans cast their vote for the President every 4 years, and in between it doesn't really matter what the voters think. You might remember that George W Bush escalated a War at 30% approval ratings and Bill Clinton was impeached at 70%. What happens on the Beltway has nothing to do with the reality taking place in the United States, and so far Obama has demonstrated a firm grasp of this concept.

So to stick with your metaphor, yes Obama is singing, but that's just because there are no Indians.

P.S. Try to avoid "the Obama family." The First Family is off limits and generally linking them to any sort of policy or political analysis is taken as extremely offensive.

[Jonny]

Incidentally, they are Para-olympians and it's Paralympics. If the gaff was anything then it's calling them 'special'.

It's odd though, to pick on the AIG bonuses as a reflection of economic mismanagement or reflective of a link with the privileged in society.

If anything the story of unfair bonuses is a nice distraction of Obama (and Brown in the UK). Much better to focus on a few nasty people with a few million in bonuses than focus on the hundresds of millions (nay, trillions) being spent on plans that may not work.

If Obama's problem is the bonuses then all is well!!