The question of the day is: is Barack Obama as cool and as shrewd as Jurgen Prochnow? Or, to be more precise, as Capt.-Lt. Henrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, the character Prochnow played in the 1982 German submarine classic Das Boot. Escaping from Allied destroyers, the captain took his submarine lower and lower into the sea. As they dived deeper, the pressure increased: the glass on the gauges broke. Rivets popped. Men broke out in a flowing sweat, their tongues hung out. Their eyes nearly popped from their skulls.
These days, as the Dow sinks, many a good man has succumbed to the pressure. Obama keeps playing it cool. The other day, David Brooks in the Times wrote that the real aim of the Obama team was a radical redistribution of the wealth. Today, after the benefit of some exclusive presentations by senior White House officials (and if you don’t think the White House isn’t playing hard to win the middle of the country, watch them pound the polarizing Rush Limbaugh with a rubber hammer, while wooing and stroking the reasonable David Brooks with executive attention), Brooks seems to think that they may know what they’re doing after all. “The White House made a case that was sophisticated and fact-based,” he writes today. “These people know how to lead a discussion and set a tone of friendly cooperation. I’m more optimistic that if Senate moderates can get their act together and come up with their own proactive plan, they can help shape a budget that allays their anxieties while meeting the president’s goals.’’
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Times’ op-ed page, Paul Krugman complains that the White House keeps floating half-hearted bank rescue plans that die on arrival, when everyone knows that what we need is to nationalize these collapsing colossi. “I fear that officials still aren’t willing to face the facts,” says Krugman. “They don’t want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it’s very hard to rescue an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. And temporary nationalization is still, apparently, considered unthinkable. But this refusal to face the facts means, in practice, an absence of action. And I share the president’s fears: inaction could result in an economy that sputters along, not for months or years, but for a decade or more.’’
Perhaps we are watching the exercise of an idea from the Ernest and Julio Gallo School of Political Strategy: sell no wine before its time. A smart proposal that people aren’t ready to support becomes a dumb idea. Nationalization may be the right answer, and may have always been the necessary answer, but until people are able to recognize that, it’s no answer at all. But after the Dow drops and the rivets pop, as unemployment rises and the glass on the gauges cracks, the center may rush to nationalization.
Is that what’s going on? I hope so. I’d hate for the White House to be as clueless as the guys at the Journal and CNBC seem to think.