The formula for restoring national confidence ”” part good policy, part good politics, part good luck ”” can be hard to find. It eluded Herbert Hoover after the Crash of ’29, Lyndon B. Johnson after the Tet offensive, Jimmy Carter after the energy shock and George W. Bush after Iraq turned from quick victory to bloody insurgency.
But President Obama has to try to do just that in a time of crisis. As the government announced this week that the nation’s largest banks had steered away from the precipice and that job losses were beginning to slow, Mr. Obama has carefully begun trying to mine any national leader’s most precious commodity in a crisis: optimism.
His past references to “glimmers of hope” were modestly upgraded at the White House on Friday, with his declaration ”” which he stumbled over, taking some of the assertiveness out of the line ”” that “the gears of our economic engine do appear to be slowly turning once again.”
Somehow, I don’t see much hope in the obliteration of property rights and a Mussolini-esque conveyance of property to political allies. From this vantage point, it looks a lot like a gangster state in motion.