Amid Anger Over Economy, Obama Looks For Right Tone
New Analysis
By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 5, 2009
President Obama, who swept to the White House on a message of hope and inspiration, is struggling to contend with a different emotion among Americans -- anger.
Livid about their own vanished jobs and decimated retirement accounts, people across the country are being subjected to story after story about the excesses of the wealthy: the $18 billion paid out in Wall Street bonuses last year, the $35,000 chest of drawers for the Merrill Lynch chief executive's office, the planned Wells Fargo retreat in Las Vegas. This week, they got a new target: an Obama Cabinet nominee who had earned millions and failed to pay all of his taxes.
"I think everybody needs to be held to task right now," said Keith Igoe, 46, a roofer in suburban Denver who was an Obama campaign volunteer. Referring to Thomas A. Daschle, who stepped aside Tuesday as Obama's nominee for health and human services secretary and White House health policy czar, Igoe said: "I don't know I'd hold him any less accountable than anybody else."
Obama has searched for the right tone for taking the transgressors to task while not crossing into glib point-scoring that could spook the business class. And his indignation has ratcheted upward in recent weeks. He made passing mention at his inauguration of "greed and irresponsibility," then declared last week that the Wall Street bonuses were "shameful."
(More here.)
By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 5, 2009
President Obama, who swept to the White House on a message of hope and inspiration, is struggling to contend with a different emotion among Americans -- anger.
Livid about their own vanished jobs and decimated retirement accounts, people across the country are being subjected to story after story about the excesses of the wealthy: the $18 billion paid out in Wall Street bonuses last year, the $35,000 chest of drawers for the Merrill Lynch chief executive's office, the planned Wells Fargo retreat in Las Vegas. This week, they got a new target: an Obama Cabinet nominee who had earned millions and failed to pay all of his taxes.
"I think everybody needs to be held to task right now," said Keith Igoe, 46, a roofer in suburban Denver who was an Obama campaign volunteer. Referring to Thomas A. Daschle, who stepped aside Tuesday as Obama's nominee for health and human services secretary and White House health policy czar, Igoe said: "I don't know I'd hold him any less accountable than anybody else."
Obama has searched for the right tone for taking the transgressors to task while not crossing into glib point-scoring that could spook the business class. And his indignation has ratcheted upward in recent weeks. He made passing mention at his inauguration of "greed and irresponsibility," then declared last week that the Wall Street bonuses were "shameful."
(More here.)
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