This week President Obama took to the podium once again to try to quell market fears after Standard & Poor's downgraded United States debt. Instead, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped below 11,000 points for the first time in several months. A closer look at his words that day may reveal why.
The President opened his remarks with a suggestion that S&P downgraded the United States because it "doubted our political system's ability to act." The negotiations over raising the debt ceiling were plagued, he says, by "the gridlock in Washington," "a lack of political will," and the "insistence of drawing lines in the sand." Had, for instance, Washington agreed to tax rates which "ask[ed] those who can afford it to pay their fair share" and "modest adjustments" to Medicare, Obama implied that a downgrade may not have occurred at all.
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If Christ were a member of the White House Press Corps, he might have asked the President, as he did in the Gospel of Matthew, "Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye?"
The President's stubborn inability to recognize his own contribution to Washington's "gridlock" recalls Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan's reversal of the Golden Rule: "Do not that to another, which thou wouldst not have done to thyself." It's a negative directive, rather that the original Biblical rule which obliges man to do for one another.
Much of the criticism directed at the President during the debt ceiling discussions stemmed from Obama doing nothing and his lack of a specific plan. Without a plan, Obama could deflect any blame -- a guiltless President.
This sort of behavior from the "finger-pointer-in-chief" is not uncommon. Before a debt ceiling agreement was reached, the President took to the airwaves in a prime-time address. He began his remarks by blaming his predecessor for squandering a budget surplus on "tax cuts," "two wars," and "an expensive prescription drug program."
But for Obama, of course, a failed $787 billion stimulus doesn't share in the blame. The notion that President Obama is blameless seems to vindicate Dinesh D'Souza's 2010 argument that Obama is neither clueless nor a socialist, but an anticolonialist. In this case, the colonizers are America's "rich" and "corporate jet owners." They have made their wealth on the backs of the poor and "looted" communities. Therefore, as a common strain in anticolonialist thought runs, the colonizers are the source of all problems.
Unfortunately for the President, as D'Souza points out, "colonialism today is a dead issue." And so, rather than blaming others, Obama might be well advised instead to make a good confession.
A public acknowledgement from the President that his Leviathan philosophy and policies have introduced a paralyzing uncertainty the U.S. economy would bring some reconciliation. But, as any good confessor knows, reconciliation is no license to sin again. Christ directed the adulterer He saved from stoning: "Go and sin no more."
The solemn promise to sin no more is an essential component to the Sacrament. Analogously, should the President change course, it would do wonders for a lagging market. There is a plank in our President's eye. Best to get it out now or voters may not offer absolution come 2012.
Nicholas G. Hahn III is an Assistant Editor for RealClearPolitics and a graduate of Political Science and Catholic Studies from DePaul University. He can be contacted here and on Twitter.
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