Stooge to Bankers

James Howard Kunstler, in his weekly missive, explains his view on President Obama's sliding approval ratings:

Polls are reporting a steep slide in President Obama's approval ratings,
especially among white voters. I doubt that this is about the health care
debate, which obviously remains unresolved at the time the polls were taken. I
think it is about Mr. Obama's shoveling of huge sums into Wall Street, and the
unabated obscene money-grubbing by the executives there -- while millions of
ordinary people get thrown out of their houses, lose jobs that they'll never get
back, and slip-slide permanently out of the middle class. His relations with
Wall Street are destroying his legitimacy. His failure to demonstrably
clean house at the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators, or
to direct the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute misdeeds stemming
from the swindles and frauds in securitized debt, make him look like a stooge to
the bankers.

I personally fault the president for putting no effort into the larger
necessary tasks of leading a transition away from suburbanization, failing to
promote public transit rather than continued car-dependency, not preparing for
re-localized farming, and continuing the unaffordable racket of imperial
military over-reach in a mode indistinguishable from G. W. Bush.

A large part of Mr. Obama's appeal as a candidate last year had to with presenting himself as an intelligent adult -- as opposed to a parent figure (or a crazy old uncle in the case of John McCain). But so far, apart from his personal charm and good looks, his adult persona is that of an actuary -- someone who can read charts, parse figures, and report them down the line for other people to draw conclusions . What he lacks at the moment is the very thing that history might foist on him: a sense that life is tragic and history is merciless and that sometimes we have to do the hard things that times require of us.