Barack Obama isn’t the first US president to conjure up scapegoats to serve his political ends. The Roosevelts, both Teddy and Franklin, were masters at the game. TR decided the trusts were an enemy of the people and busted the likes of Standard Oil and Northern Securities, which controlled the railroads in the northwest. FDR demonized just about anyone who had money.
Harry Truman seized the steel companies to avert a nationwide strike, noting that “the steel industry has never been so profitable as it is today.” When US Steel and other large steel producers raised prices, John F. Kennedy chided them for pursuing “private power and profit” at the expense of 185 million Americans.
Sound familiar? Substitute Obama for Truman, and oil for steel, and the tactics are quite similar.
Obama has elevated scapegoating to a new level. He has his usual suspects — the “millionaires and billionaires” who serve as foils at campaign events — as well as temporary targets that come and go as the situation warrants.
For example, insurance companies played the role of villain during the health-care debate in 2009. When it was time to craft the Dodd-Frank financial-reform bill, banks were the bad guys. As for oil companies, they are a permanent pebble in Obama’s shoe.
Singling out oil and gas companies for punishment may solidify his populist credentials, but Obama knows that repealing $4 billion of deductions is a drop in the bucket compared with an annual $1 trillion of tax breaks and loopholes in the federal budget.
Besides, with Obama it’s never really about the cost savings. If it comes down to a choice between good economics and sound policy on the one hand and “fairness” — fairness as defined by Obama — on the other, we know which one our president will choose.
Singling out specific industries as scapegoats for his political purposes doesn’t strike me as particularly fair. I guess it depends on what the meaning of fairness is.