Word: paulsons
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...after former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan confessed the irrelevance of truth to his p.r. strategy--his television appearances are now widely ignored, and his approval ratings have touched an all-time low of 23%, according to a new TIME poll. His Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson Jr., wasn't a much more compelling pitchman for near absolute power to help his former Wall Street colleagues; his public warnings that disaster was imminent but that the evidence had to remain secret were reminiscent of antiterrorism officials who raised the threat level to orange but refused to tell...
...want to face a populist backlash alone. Revulsion at a Wall Street bailout has crossed ideological lines, with liberals as disgusted by handouts to irresponsible bankers as conservatives are by a socialist solution to capitalist problems. On the Hill, constituent phone calls ran 100 to 1 against the Paulson plan, and most vulnerable incumbents in both parties voted against it despite all the doom-and-gloom warnings about the devastating consequences. It's times like these that call for presidential leadership, and Bush no longer has many followers, which is why his spokesmen are so busy counseling against finger-pointing...
Part of the problem was the lousy job Bush and Paulson did selling their plan to relieve banks of their toxic loans. They failed to brand it as an economic recovery plan instead of a bailout, a surprising mistake for an Administration renowned for giving initiatives perfumed names like Healthy Forests and Clear Skies. They began by demanding almost Napoleonic levels of authority, although they later compromised on that. They released the $700 billion figure without making it clear that the Treasury can eventually get most of the money back or even turn a profit if the economy rebounds...
...credibility problems are more about the messengers than the message. Paulson is not a political veteran, and he was asking for the authority to do things he's been insisting for months were unnecessary. "I cannot ignore that many of the people sounding the alarm are the same ones who recently said things were under control ... that stronger government oversight was unnecessary and counterproductive," Democratic Congressman Mark Udall, now a Senate candidate in Colorado, said after voting...
...government that regards business as its only constituent.” And while he stated that the Bush administration’s $700 billion figure for a bailout came “out of Paulson’s ass,” refering to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, he conceded that the government must still take action...