David Bromwich:
The usual turn from unsatisfying wars abroad to happier domestic conditions, however, no longer seems tenable. In these August days, Americans are rubbing their eyes, still wondering what has befallen us with the president’s “debt deal” — a shifting of tectonic plates beneath the economy of a sort Dick Cheney might have dreamed of, but which Barack Obama and the House Republicans together brought to fruition. A redistribution of wealth and power more than three decades in the making has now been carved into the system and given the stamp of permanence.
Only a Democratic president, and only one associated in the public mind (however wrongly) with the fortunes of the poor, could have accomplished such a reversal with such sickening completeness.
One of the last good times that President Obama enjoyed before the frenzy of debt negotiations began was a chuckle he shared with Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric and now head of the president’s outside panel of economic advisers. At a June 13th meeting of the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, a questioner said he assumed that President Obama knew about the difficulties caused by the drawn-out process of securing permits for construction jobs. Obama leaned into the microphone and offered a breezy ad-lib: “Shovel ready wasn’t as, uh, shovel-ready as we expected” — and Immelt got off a hearty laugh. An unguarded moment: the president of “hope and change” signifying his solidarity with the big managers whose worldly irony he had adopted.
One self-centered jerk, already counting up the residuals from his memoirs.
Comment by Michael Hureaux Perez — August 18, 2011 @ 8:49 pm
Ain’t he cute?
At the local post office, some engineer from Harris was bragging about some super-bomb. Besides the plutocrats, we’ve a nation of sold-out boys.
Wait till we get the cream of the crop that grew up under Ronnie.
Comment by Indian Jones — August 18, 2011 @ 10:32 pm
I can’t wait for Obama’s new book, “How to Take Power Without Changing the World.” I wonder if any of the unemployed Borders workers will be able to use their unemployment to buy it.
Comment by Binh — August 19, 2011 @ 6:13 pm
Was the butt of his snobbish remark supposed to be the blue collar workers like carpenters.
That’s how I see it and it just confirms that he is the commander in chief of the bourgeois country club called congress.
Also nice to know that as the market falls, unemployment is up and inflation rises, our bourgeois President is off on yet another family vacation to Martha’s Vineyard for 10 days.
He can’t be bothered by all this economy stuff, you know that’s for us little people to deal with–shovel in hand.
Comment by Deborah Jeffries — August 20, 2011 @ 1:15 am
To clarify my last comment, the country is in economic freefall and our royal highness Obama goes on holiday leaving us to shovel the sh*t.
Fellow peasants, is your shovel ready?
Comment by Deborah Jeffries — August 20, 2011 @ 3:08 pm
I stand corrected fellow peasants, I cannot afford a shovel because I’m on unemployment.
Comment by Deborah Jeffries — August 20, 2011 @ 7:44 pm