From now until the ceremonial pens are out, the biggest and most boring news is going to be the progress of the Obama stimulus package. On this piece of legislation, which the Obama people would like Congress to have ready for the president’s signature on Jan. 20, lie both the prospects for the Obama administration and the fate of the nation.
Or at least that’s the sudden-death drumbeat of the battle.
The dirge quality of the drums and the scariness of the threat are enhanced by the likelihood that the circumstance as portrayed is accurate: We’re completely dependent on this package.
This is pretty much the last chance.
(AP Image)
The downside to this argument is that it is the same argument that has been made all fall and that each ensuing stimulus, passed after all manner of end-of-the-world talk, has failed to stop the freefall. This is because the velocity of the onrushing crisis is too great—the linking and mutual dependence of all securities and investment instruments make for a doomsday domino scenario—or because the various stimulus concepts have been flawed.
Hence, reasonable men on the Democratic side are saying, shouldn’t we try to get this right this time and not be rushed into another half-baked scheme? And obstreperous men on the Republican side are saying we have a perfectly reasonable rational for delaying this bill and for not handing the Democrats a victory that could redound to them for generations.
The Obamateers have two strategies: The first is to demonstrate that they are also reasonable and conciliatory, hence the addition of the impressive $300 billion in tax cuts to the package; the second is to meaningfully increase the sense of panic and of doom. It is not only the economy and with it the nation that’s about to terminally self-destruct, but—in a message to the now mighty Democratic majority—the future of the party too.
This is, in other words, our shot at immortality.
So get ready to feel even more end-of-the-world than you have felt. Indeed, if the Obamateers are doing their job right, you will, over the next three weeks, feel as hopeless as you can feel. It’ll be the nadir of public consciousness (the fact that the Israelis are once again toying with Armageddon is helpful background). Darkness at noon is approaching, the abyss is opening. The whole point, the premium, will be to create fear itself. And if, by January 20, you’re shaking in your boots, ready to turn a desperate, pleading face to the man at the podium—the puffs of his hot breath in the cold air—you’ll know at least that these guys can talk the talk. And that hopefulness and recovery are just around the corner.
