[Assam] Slumdogs Unite! - Frank Rich, NYT

[Ram Sarangapani]

*****This is why "Slumdog Millionaire," which pits a hard-working young man
in Mumbai against a corrupt nexus of money and privilege, has become
America's movie of the year. As Robert Reich, the former Clinton labor
secretary, wrote<http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/02/tom-daschle-and-populist-revolt.html>after
Daschle's fall, Americans "resent people who appear to be living high
off a system dominated by insiders with the right connections."***** From
the NYT

Well, we all know what SDM tells us about Mumbai and India, don't we? :).
But what does it tell us about the state of affairs at 'Lincolnprastha' in
DC?

__________________



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/opinion/08rich.html?pagewanted=print


------------------------------
February 8, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Slumdogs Unite! By FRANK
RICH<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/frankrich/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

SOMEDAY historians may look back at Tom Daschle's
flameout<http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/tom-daschle-withdraws-as-health-nominee/>as
a minor one-car (and chauffeur) accident. But that will depend on
whether
or not it's followed by a multi-vehicle pileup that still could come. Even
as President Obama refreshingly took
responsibility<http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/02/03/1779622.aspx>for
having "screwed up," it's not clear that he fully understands the huge
forces that hit his young administration last week.

The tsunami of populist rage coursing through America is bigger than
Daschle's overdue tax
bill<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/us/politics/02daschle.html>,
bigger than John Thain's trash
can<http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/01/24/2009-01-24_canned_merrill_lynch_ceo_john_thains_spe.html>,
bigger than any bailed-out C.E.O.'s
bonus<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/business/29bonus.html>.
It's even bigger than the Obama phenomenon itself. It could maim the
president's best-laid plans and what remains of our economy if he doesn't
get in front of the mounting public anger.

Like nearly everyone else in Washington, Obama was blindsided by the
savagery and speed of Daschle's demise. Conventional wisdom had him
surviving the storm. Such is the city's culture that not a single Republican
or Democratic senator called for his
withdrawal<http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/02/did_daschle_jump_too_soon.php>until
the morning of his exit. Membership in the exclusive Senate club,
after all, has its privileges. Among Daschle's more vocal defenders was Bob
Dole <http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/16898>, who had
recruited<http://www.newsweek.com/id/48945>him to Alston & Bird, the
law and lobbying firm where Dole has served as "special
counsel <http://www.alston.com/bob_dole/>" when not otherwise cashing in on
his own Senate years by serving as a pitchman for
Pepsi<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E0D81238F932A35753C1A9649C8B63>and
Viagra <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/weekinreview/30word.html>.

In New York, editorial pages on both ends of the political spectrum, The
Wall Street Journal<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123353200827537439.html>and
The
Times <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/opinion/03tue1.html>, called for
Daschle to step down. But not The Washington Post. In a frank expression of
the capital's isolation from the country, it thought Daschle could still
soldier on<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/02/AR2009020202767.html>even
though "ordinary Americans who pay their taxes may well wonder why Mr.
Obama can't find cabinet secretaries who do the same."

As Jon Stewart might say, oh those pesky ordinary Americans!

In reality, Daschle's tax shortfall, an apparently honest mistake, was only
a red flag for the larger syndrome that much of Washington still doesn't
get. It was the source, not the amount, of his unreported income that did
him in. The car and driver advertised his post-Senate immersion in the
greedy bipartisan culture of entitlement and crony capitalism that both
helped create our economic meltdown (on Wall Street) and failed to police it
(in Washington). Daschle might well have been the best choice to lead
health-care reform. But his honorable public record was instantly vaporized
by tales of his cozy, lucrative
relationships<http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090131/pl_politico/18237>with
the very companies he'd have to adjudicate as health czar.

Few articulate this ethical morass better than Obama, who has repeatedly
vowed to "close the revolving
door<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/us/politics/03lobby.html>"
between business and government and end
our<http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0902/03/acd.01.html>"two
sets of standards, one for powerful people and one for ordinary
folks."
But his tough new
restrictions<http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrder-EthicsCommitments/>on
lobbyists (already
compromised<http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2009/01/obama-administration-undermines-its-own-ethics-standards-again.html>
by
inexplicable<http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/groups-urge-senate-to-reject-lynn-2009-01-23.html>
exceptions<http://undertheinfluence.nationaljournal.com/2009/01/more-lobbyists-in-obama-admini.php>)
and porous plan for salary
caps<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/us/politics/05pay.html>on
bailed-out bankers are only a down payment on this promise, even if
they
are strictly enforced.

The new president who vowed to change Washington's culture will have to
fight much harder to keep from being co-opted by it instead. There are
simply too many major players in the Obama team who are either alumni of the
financial bubble's insiders' club or of the somnambulant governmental
establishment that presided over the catastrophe.

This includes Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary. Washington hands
repeatedly observe how "lucky" Geithner was to be the first cabinet nominee
with an I.R.S. problem, not the second, and therefore get confirmed by
Congress while the getting was good. Whether or not this is "lucky" for him,
it is hardly lucky for Obama. Geithner should have left ahead of Daschle.

Now more than ever, the president must inspire confidence and stave off
panic. As Friday's new unemployment
figures<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/business/economy/07jobs.html>showed,
the economy kept plummeting while Congress postured. Though Obama is
a genius at building public support, he is not Jesus and he can't do it all
alone. On Monday, it's Geithner who will
unveil<http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gUVQWj9DT1Yx2vsbRRrLWD1sQR-QD965OEGG0>the
thorniest piece of the economic recovery plan to date — phase two of a
bank rescue. The public face of this inevitably controversial package is now
best known as the guy who escaped the tax reckoning that brought Daschle
down.

Even before the revelation of his tax delinquency, the new Treasury
secretary was a dubious choice to make this pitch. Geithner was present at
the creation of the first, ineffectual and opaque bank bailout — TARP, today
the most radioactive acronym in American politics. Now the double standard
that allowed him to wriggle out of his tax mess is a metaphor for the double
standard of the policy he must sell: Most "ordinary Americans" still don't
understand why banks got billions while nothing was done (and still isn't
being done) to bail out those who lost their homes, jobs and retirement
savings.

As with Daschle, the political problems caused by Geithner's tax infraction
are secondary to the larger questions raised by his past interaction with
the corporations now under his purview. To his credit, Geithner, like Obama,
has devoted his career to public service, not buckraking. But he still has
not satisfactorily explained why, as president of the New York Fed, he
failed in his oversight of the teetering Wall Street institutions. Nor has
he told us why, in his first major move in his new job, he secured a waiver
from Obama to hire a Goldman Sachs
lobbyist<http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=6735898&page=2>as his
chief of staff. Nor, in his confirmation
hearings<http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy-watch/2009/01/grassley_bank_nationalization.html>,
did he prove any more credible than the Bush Treasury secretary, the Goldman
Sachs alumnus Hank Paulson, in
explaining<http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2008/10/23/hank-paulson-revisionist>why
Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail while A.I.G. and Citigroup were
spared.

Citigroup had one highly visible asset that Lehman did not: Robert Rubin,
the former Clinton Treasury secretary who sat passively (though lucratively)
in its executive
suite<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/business/23citi.html>as Citi
gorged on reckless risk. Geithner, as a
Rubin protégé <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/us/politics/24rubin.html>from
the Clinton years, might have recused himself from rescuing Citi,
which
so far has devoured<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123366855229743343.html>$45
billion in bailout money.

Key players in the Obama economic team beyond Geithner are also tied to
Rubin or Citigroup or both, from Larry Summers, the administration's top
economic adviser, to Gary Gensler, the newly named
nominee<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aiHHv7Lrvx98&refer=home>to
run the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and a Treasury
undersecretary in the Clinton administration. Back then, Summers and Gensler
joined hands with Phil Gramm to ward off regulation of the derivative
markets <http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090216/hayes> that have since
brought the banking system to ruin. We must take it on faith that they have
subsequently had judgment transplants.

Obama's brilliant appointees, we keep being told, are irreplaceable. But as
de Gaulle said <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/weekinreview/18lohr.html>,
"The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men." You have to
wonder if this team is really a meritocracy or merely a stacked deck. Not
only did Rubin himself serve on the Obama economic transition team, but two
of the transition's
headhunters<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/us/politics/24rubin.html>were
Michael Froman, Rubin's
chief of staff at Treasury and later a Citigroup
executive<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/us/politics/14web-froman.html>,
and James S. Rubin, an investor who is Robert Rubin's son.

A welcome outlier to this club is Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve
chairman chosen
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/business/07web-econ.html>to direct
Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. But Bloomberg reported
last week<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aaLzJZKNcc6Y&refer=home>that
Summers is already freezing Volcker out of many of his deliberations
on
economic policy. This sounds like the arrogant Summers who was fired as
president of Harvard, not the chastened new Summers advertised at the time
of his appointment. A team of rivals is not his thing.

Americans have had enough of such arrogance, whether in the public or
private sectors, whether Democrat or Republican. Voters turned on Sarah
Palin not just because of her manifest unfitness for office but because her
claims of being a regular hockey mom were contradicted by her Evita shopping
sprees <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/us/politics/23palin.html>. John
McCain's sanctification of Joe the Plumber (himself a tax
delinquent<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWDHvDjnDnTs&refer=home>)
never could be squared with his inability to remember how many houses he
owned <http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12685.html>. A graphic act
of entitlement also stripped naked that faux populist John
Edwards<http://abcnews.go.com/blotter/Story?id=5441195&page=1>
.

The public's revulsion isn't mindless class hatred. As Obama said on
Wednesday <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/us/politics/04text-obama.html>of
his fellow citizens: "We don't disparage wealth. We don't begrudge
anybody for achieving success." But we do know that the system has been
fixed for too long. The gaping income inequality of the past
decade<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119215822413557069.html>— the
top 1 percent of America's earners received more than 20 percent of
the total national income — has not been seen since the run-up to the Great
Depression.

This is why "Slumdog Millionaire," which pits a hard-working young man in
Mumbai against a corrupt nexus of money and privilege, has become America's
movie of the year. As Robert Reich, the former Clinton labor secretary,
wrote<http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/02/tom-daschle-and-populist-revolt.html>after
Daschle's fall, Americans "resent people who appear to be living high
off a system dominated by insiders with the right connections."

The neo-Hoover Republicans in Congress, who think government can put
Americans back to work with corporate tax cuts but without any "spending,"
are tone deaf to this rage. Obama is not. It's a good thing he's getting out
of Washington <http://www.politico.com/playbook/0209/playbook578.html> this
week to barnstorm the country about the crisis at hand. Once back home, he's
got to make certain that the insiders in his own White House know who's the
boss.