Our Tragic Flaw

Is the A.I.G. bonus crisis Obama's "Katrina moment?" Frank Rich of The New York Times thinks so:

A CHARMING visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: “President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived.”

Six weeks ago I wrote in this space that the country’s surge of populist rage could devour the president’s best-laid plans, including the essential Act II of the bank rescue, if he didn’t get in front of it. The occasion then was the Tom Daschle firestorm. The White House seemed utterly blindsided by the public’s revulsion at the moneyed insiders’ culture illuminated by Daschle’s post-Senate career. Yet last week’s events suggest that the administration learned nothing from that brush with disaster.

What's interesting to me is the eruption of populist rage on Obama's watch, when it was the previous administration that was most blatant and unrepentent in its outright class warfare.

But let's not cry too long over spilt milk. I find it somewhat reassuring that Americans are even capable of populist rage anymore. At the very least, this may provide the Obama administration the support it needs to tilt a little further to the left (if any will to do so can be mustered at this late stage). At best, this mass outcry of public opinion against the gross stratification of wealth may even galvanize into some kind of revolutionary movement.

Such a movement could actually be of use if the concern over excessive wealth became fused with the concern over global climate disruption and other threats to the global ecosystem. Some kind of revolution--provided it is nonviolent in nature--is absolutely necessary if we as a species are to survive.

It would be convenient if the present economic catastrophe turned out to be the catalyst we needed to spawn truly revolutionary action at last.