How political posturing masquerades as outrage

By Jon Ralston

Sunday, March 22, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Whenever I hear that politicians are, in their words, “outraged,” I figure they have been refused a dinner reservation, portrayed as less than godlike in the media or snubbed by a campaign contributor. That is, I don’t take it too seriously.

That’s the main reason I find it hard to simply soak in the geyser of outrage springing up on Capitol Hill over those AIG bonuses, especially because Democrats and Republicans alike are all wet. They want to douse the fires of populist fury with their own empathetic wellspring of anger, legislatively embodied in a confiscatory, retroactive tax bill. But what they are also doing is engaging in the sport of choice for all seasons in D.C. — partisan finger-pointing — and performing a marvelous political alchemy by transforming spring of an off-year into late fall of an election year.

It doesn’t seem like March 2009; it feels like October 2010. Instead of cherry blossoms blooming in a warm Washington, a chill is in the air. Talk about climate change.

Only a few months after the Democratic wave swept the country and washed away Republicans in the House and Senate, the GOP campaign committees are sensing a resurgence. And the stimulus package, with the AIG bonuses as a turbocharger, is just the vehicle they ordered to exploit frustration in a depressed country.

The blame game on the economy actually began during Campaign ’08 and helped cause John McCain’s campaign to disintegrate. The next iteration was when we had the Democrats fleeing to escape evidence they, including Obama, had enabled Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Then, as Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. collapsed, the game continued as fingers pointed at the laissez-faire regulation that is a hallmark of the GOP.

Which brings us to AIG, an old story wrought new because of the populist volcano, and partisanship and spinning have erupted on Capitol Hill. Despite bonding over their near-unanimous opposition to the stimulus bill, congressional Republicans had gained no traction — approval ratings under 20 percent. But with AIG — and now the Perry Mason moment of Sen. Chris Dodd’s confession he inserted the bonus language — the Republicans think they have the Democrats right where they want them.

They have been ambushing Democrats on Capitol Hill — including Nevada’s Dina Titus — asking them whether they read the entire stimulus bill. When they inevitably say they did read it — as Titus did to brush off the pesky interlocutor — that gives the National Republican Congressional Committee ammunition to put out releases questioning whether the ambushee was lying or knowingly voted for the AIG bonuses. The Democrats don’t have much wiggle room, even though very few legislators, from D.C. to Carson City, read long, complex bills in their entirety. So it was no surprise during the debate on the 90 percent tax rate on the bonuses, Democrats rose on the floor, as Titus did, in — wait for it — “outrage ...”

The Republicans smell blood, but they don’t have clean hands. As Media Matters and others have pointed out, Bush 43’s Treasury Department — you remember the first socialist administration, don’t you? — bailed out AIG with full knowledge of the bonus contracts. Indeed, Dodd, in a bit of irony, had put forth an amendment to restrict bonuses to future TARP beneficiaries.

The grotesquerie has not been confined to the House, either. In the Senate, Democrats are trying to staunch the damage, with Majority Leader Harry Reid, who once bragged of appointing himself to the stimulus conference committee, now having that fact used against him in a new Web ad by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Reid, in his classic peremptory style, tried to cut off reporters last week when they asked him about AIG, declaring, as Politico reported: “I not only don’t want to talk about it, I’m not going to.” But he will have to, eventually.

Reid’s good friend, John Ensign, has joined the pounding of Obama and the Democrats, insisting the GOP bears no responsibility because almost all Republicans voted against the stimulus, although none of them said a peep about the bonus provision. Until now most Republicans, including Ensign, who has taken tens of thousands from the insurance giant, loved AIG.

Now, with the public believing the company is the anthropomorphosis of the devil, Ensign & Co. are gleefully painting the Democrats as Beelzebub’s minions. And with some success — the price of Democrats being the party in power.

Most of this opportunistic silliness might actually be forgotten when it really is October 2010, replaced by some other overly hyped issue fueled by partisan spinmeisters looking to exploit the public’s emotion of the moment. You know how I feel about that possibility?

I’m outraged.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program “Face to Face With Jon Ralston” on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the daily e-mail newsletter “RalstonFlash.com.” His column for the Las Vegas Sun appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or at [email protected].