In Bid To Grab Control Of Story, Obama Takes Responsibility For AIG Mess
This morning I noted that Rahm Emanuel had sounded a bit of a false note, saying that Obama viewed the AIG mess as a “big distraction” from his efforts to fix the financial system overall.
Maybe not so much.
Obama just took questions from reporters, and made a major bid to take control of this story. He placed responsibility for the fiasco squarely on his own shoulders, uncorked a populist blast against “greed” on Wall Street and strongly implied that Republicans blasting the big bonuses are hypocrites.
Asked if he wished he’d known about the bonuses sooner, Obama said, in the course of answering: “Ultimately, I’m responsible. I’m the President of the United States…The buck stops with me.”
“My goal is to make sure that we never put ourselves in this kind of position again,” he said, adding that the AIG story was “consuming” the public, and “rightfully so.”
Obama also moved to acknowledge public anger about the AIG saga, but said that the proper response was to place the AIG story in a larger context.
“People are right to be angry,” he said. “I’m angry. What I want us to do, though, is channel our anger in a constructive way.” Obama touted his plan for a “resolution authority” that would have power over financial firms similar to the FDIC’s over banks, and promised to “fast track” it with Congress.
In an apparent shot at GOPers who are blasting the bonuses, Obama said that there are “a whole bunch of folks now feigning outrage” that a year or two ago would have said “we should never meddle” in the private sector.
Obama’s schedule today didn’t say he’d take questions, and his decision to do so looks like an acknowledgment that the White House had lost control of the story and has to move quickly to reassert the President’s leadership. The question is whether he can persuade the public to move beyond the AIG bonuses and focus on the larger context, the larger storyline about the challenges Obama is trying to tackle right now.
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Yep, the buck does stop with BigO. His choice of Larry NoChange Summers and his assistant Timothy LightWeight Summers is coming home to roost.
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I suspect their difficulties filling Treasury jobs is an indicator. Is it that they can’t find any really bright people who agree with their strategy of continued Wall Street ***-kissing? Maybe nobody sees much prestige in working for Geithner since all he does is channel Summers? Or maybe Summers and Geithner don’t want to have to waste time convincing other people who know what’s going on that their strategy is the right one?
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Seriously, Greg, could you indulge us in some speculation as to why all those Treasure posts remain empty?
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Glad he got in a shot about the feigned outrage. The amount of grandstanding that’s going on right now is truly mind-boggling, both from the Repugs who are opposed to the AIG bonuses only because that stance gives them another opportunity to point fingers at Obama, and from the Dems who looked the other way while the Repugs dismantled regulation.
jzap, that one is mystifying…I don’t have an answer yet.
Obama’s schedule today didn’t say he’d take questions, and his decision to do so looks like an acknowledgment that the White House had lost control of the story and has to move quickly to reassert the President’s leadership.
Greg, you drive me nuts doing that – like Unk said: take two steps.
It doesn’t necessarily mean Obama “lost control” but that he is worried he might if he didn’t do something.
As far as his saying the buck stops there – he campaigned as that kind of president and he was always take responsibility. I don’t think one little teensy iota of this is Obama’s fault. But he’s in charge and rightly faces the anger and takes his lumps.
should have read: “he was always going to take responsibility.”
mea culpa -
What’s interesting is it looks like Obama could have just forced the GOP’s hand here with his proposition for a new regulatory body. With all of their professed outrage now, how can they not move for a regulatory body considering the contract signed for the retention bonuses was signed months if not years before Obama came in office.
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You have Limbaugh defending AIG, as is Sen. Kyl for one – at least they’re consistent – the rest of the GOP stands for nothing other than to try and put the screws to Obama. The GOP SHOULD be all for AIG “getting what’s theirs”, it was in their contract afterall.
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The MSM have a bone and they’re chewing on it until the next story comes along. It doesn’t seem to me that any of this is sticking on Obama, Geithner or the administration as much as the Republicans try. Geithner isn’t a politician and didn’t want to concern himself with some bonus that account for less than one tenth of a percent of the overall AIG payout when he’s got the weight of the whole economy on his shoulders.
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This is really, if not a non-story, a molehill story that the MS made into a mountain to give them something to cover and zing Obama with for a news cycle.
re jzap’s question
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I would bet a lot of wall street types don’t pay their taxes. That and the fact that Republicans aren’t getting called out for dragging out the process on some of them which means they effectively are in limbo with no job and no certainty when or if they will be confirmed
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But to Greg’s post, I saw it live and I think that President Obama finally found the right media message. Here is the deal, they never should have sent Summers out to say they couldn’t do anything about it. He should have said some version of “I don’t know what we are going to do right now”. And then President Obama should have come out and owned it. Owned it and thrown them squarely under the bus. Thats some of what he did today as well as making sure people were reminded that he inherited the problem but that it was his job to clean it up. I think that if he sends out people to kind of repeat his message today then they can get control back of the message. He needs to lump it all on the same fire. The deregulation of wall street, the excess and greed, and the out of control bonuses. All of which he is here to clean up. I think it was the right way to go. The only question now is how the media will cover it. Geitner is still going to be a problem going forward until the banks get on more solid footing though.
I think I read that at least one Repub senator has a hold on the other Treasury nominees.
Asked if he wished he’d known about the bonuses sooner, Obama said, in the course of answering: “Ultimately, I’m responsible. I’m the President of the United States…The buck stops with me.”
He found out about the bonuses the day before the checks were cut. Why didn’t he act then? Between Obama, Geithner, Summers and now Emanuel, a credibility gap has opened. Who is in charge?
Just saw this item and was going to remark on it in the earlier related thread. Whatever degree off-note Rahm’s earlier statement might have been, it just got crunched by a much better message from Obama. Smart boy.
‘In an apparent shot at GOPers who are blasting the bonuses, Obama said that there are “a whole bunch of folks now feigning outrage” that a year or two ago would have said “we should never meddle” in the private sector.’
GOPers? You have Barney Frank running around threatening Liddy with subpoenas. You have Chuck Schumer opening up his big yap whenever there are cameras around. Last time I checked, neither Frank or Schumer were “GOPers”. Neither is Dodd, another one blasting bonuses, even though he is the guy who put in the amendment in the Porkulus to allow the bonuses to go through. Neither is Obama, who signed Porkulus.
‘“I’m angry. What I want us to do, though, is channel our anger in a constructive way.”’
He should have thought of that before shooting his mouth off earlier in the week.
hmmm…the WH story keeps changing:
“I at that point realized that we were going to have a backlash with regard to these bonuses,” Kanjorski said in an AP interview. In a meeting with Liddy later that month, he said he told the AIG chief that “all hell would break loose if we didn’t find a way to inform the public … and that we should take every step to put that information out there so we wouldn’t have the shock.”
Around the same time, Congress and Obama’s team were passing up an opportunity to put in place strict laws to revoke bonuses from recipients of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. In February, the Senate voted to add such a proposal to the economic recovery bill that cleared Congress, but in final closed-door talks on the measure, that provision was dropped in favor of limits that affect only future payments.
“There was a lot of lobbying against it and it died,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who proposed the measure with Republican Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. He said Obama’s team is sending mixed messages on what will and won’t be tolerated on bonuses, with the president coming out strongly against excessive Wall Street rewards but top officials not following through.
“The president goes out and says this is not acceptable, and then some backroom deal gets cut to let these things get paid out anyway,” Wyden said. “They need to put this to bed once and for all.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090318/ap_on_go_pr_wh/aig_what_did_they_know
…tonight Dodd admitted that the Treasury/WH pressured for strict restrictions on the bonuses to be taken out…
I don’t see this bonus bit as being a distraction from the whole economic mess. It shouldn’t be that difficult to do two things at once. While fixing the mess, also get the bonuses back. Bush had a difficult time thinking about even one thing for an extended period. Obama doesn’t have that problem.