Obama as Confidence Man

When he signs the Recovery and Reinvestment Act today, the President will be asking Americans to take a leap of faith into a future that is darkening rapidly.

Today's bad news is that California is going broke, Kansas is following suit and even Donald Trump's casino empire is filing for bankruptcy. Yet Barack Obama will try to reassure us that the biggest financial gamble in American history is our best choice for saving the economy.

His inspirational skills are facing the supreme test. Before taking office, he told us "the very fact that this crisis is largely of our own making means that it is not beyond our ability to solve. Our problems are rooted in past mistakes, not our capacity for future greatness. It will take time, perhaps many years, but we can rebuild that lost trust and confidence."

Confidence is the key, but it is a word that cuts two ways, meaning trust and also deception, as in "confidence game." From all sides, politicians, economists and unaffiliated naysayers are attacking the stimulus bill as too large or too small, with too much spending or too many tax cuts, too slow or too scattered--too scary in every conceivable way.

We are back to a time when FDR's warning that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" is becoming a main element of our dilemma--consumer fear of spending, banks' fear of lending, politicians' fear of making mistakes.

It may help to recall what the then President-Elect said about the origins of this mess:

"We arrived at this point due to an era of profound irresponsibility that stretched from corporate boardrooms to the halls of power in Washington, DC. For years, too many Wall Street executives made imprudent and dangerous decisions, seeking profits with too little regard for risk, too little regulatory scrutiny, and too little accountability. Banks made loans without concern for whether borrowers could repay them, and some borrowers took advantage of cheap credit to take on debt they couldn’t afford. Politicians spent taxpayer money without wisdom or discipline, and too often focused on scoring political points instead of the problems they were sent here to solve. The result has been a devastating loss of trust and confidence in our economy, our financial markets, and our government."

As he signs the new bill, however imperfect, the politicians and pundits may want to take time out from their yapping and join the American people in giving the President a vote of confidence.

California Crisis

Teetering at the edge of bankruptcy with Arnold Schwarzenegger facing a reprise as the Terminator, this time of public employees, the big political issue in the Golden State is whether or not Ellen DeGeneres' marriage is legal.

Sponsors of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage last month, now want to nullify thousands of unions between gay and lesbian couples performed after the state Supreme Court ruled them constitutional last May.

Fittingly enough for California, the legal battle is shaping up with an all-star cast of yesteryear, like a remake of "Sunset Boulevard," with Kenneth Starr and Jerry Brown in the leading geriatric roles.

Starr, the Inspector Javier of Bill Clinton's impeachment, will be defending the ban, presumably with all the zeal he brought to saving America from the threat of Monica Lewinsky's semen-stained dress over a decade ago.

Opposing him will be the State's Attorney General, Jerry Brown, who stirs nostalgia for his time in the 1970s as the quirky populist California governor who refused to move into the executive mansion and, as a bachelor, became famous for dating Linda Ronstadt.

In a surprise move, Brown, who is charged with enforcing the new law, yesterday asked the Court to invalidate Proposition 8 on the grounds that it "deprives people of the right to marry, an aspect of liberty that the Supreme Court has concluded is guaranteed by the California Constitution."

Amid the economic chaos that the outgoing Bush administration has brought America, its backers are determined to stay on the job wreaking cultural havoc. Millions of homes may be foreclosed in California over the coming months, but until then, they will be spending the state's time and money to make sure that those bedrooms aren't being legally occupied by the wrong people.