Obama's Economic Chutzpah

I don't know if anyone else has read Nina Easton's piece on Obama's economic agenda, it is a must read. She interviewed him for the pice and he said somethings that were jawdropping.

So? "There's a reason why the business community in Chicago as a whole has been very supportive of me," he says. "They know I am a pro-growth guy, and I'm a pro-market guy. And I always have been. What I do get frustrated with is an economy that is out of balance, that rewards a very few - with rewards that are all out of proportion to their actual success - while ordinary, hardworking Americans continue to get squeezed. Over the last decade or so, this economy grew substantially, and more than half of the total growth was captured by the top 1%."

Easton continues...

Here, the great reconciler pauses, just briefly, to give due to forces that aren't easy targets of political blame. "Now part of that has to do with globalization and with global capital being able to move everywhere it wants. It has meant a winner-take-all environment."

But, he adds, quickly returning to Washington politics, "a lot of it has to do with tax policies" that favor the big winners. That means President Bush's policies, and by extension those of Obama's rival, John McCain.

Now, first it takes a lot of chutzpah for Obama to claim he is a free market supporter. There is a lot of chutzpah for someone to go in front of labor and demonize big business in favor of all sorts of worker friendly regulations, and then sit in front of the business magazine Fortune and portray yourself as pro free markets and business.

The chutzpah doesn't end there. As soon as he is done proclaiming himself pro free market he slams policies that make it winner take all. Isn't that essentially how markets work? Aren't markets intended as survival of the fittest? Isn't it the market not some mysterious tax policy that "favor the big winner"?

Does Barack Obama really think that he is so charming that he can basically go to any group he wants and proclaim anything he wants no matter how contradictory they are to other statements? Does anyone understand just how narcissism a person must have to think they can pull that off?

It appears that Barack Obama thinks he can actually pander to each and every group at the same time. If he can pander to labor about business and then also go to a business magazine and proclaim himself pro business he can probably say anything and get people to believe him.