Mort Zuckerman: Hey, This Obama Is Kind Of a SCOAMF, Isn't He?

Well, he didn't put it exactly like that. But only because he apparently doesn't know there's a convenient acronym he could use to refer to Obama that would fit perfectly throughout his entire WSJ Weekend Interview.

... as Mr. Zuckerman ponders the Occupy Wall Street movement, he concludes that "the door to it was opened by the Obama administration, going after the 'millionaires and billionaires' as if everybody is a millionaire and a billionaire and they didn't earn it. . . . To fan that flame of populist anger I think is very divisive and very dangerous for this country."

Ya think? It goes on.

At that time [Zuckerman] supported Mr. Obama's call for heavy spending on infrastructure. "But if you look at the make-up of the stimulus program," says Mr. Zuckerman, "roughly half of it went to state and local municipalities, which is in effect to the municipal unions which are at the core of the Democratic Party." He adds that "the Republicans understood this" and it diminished the chances for bipartisan legislating.

Then there was health-care reform: "Eighty percent of the country wanted them to get costs under control, not to extend the coverage. They used all their political capital to extend the coverage. I always had the feeling the country looked at that bill and said, 'Well, he may be doing it because he wants to be a transformational president, but I want to get my costs down!'"

As John McClane might say, "Welcome to the party, pal!"

A large number of the "millionaires and billionaires" who occupy Wall Street's corner offices contributed to Obama's campaign and voted for him. Leaving aside the fact that they should have been smart enough to see this coming, is it really surprising they've grown weary of being demonized ... especially by someone as ineffective as Obama?

It'd be different if it was a wink-wink, nod-nod kind of deal where some light bitching about "the rich" was just part of the act, but all they see now is a ruined economy and a bunch of disaffected yobs being whipped into a frenzy by a guy in love with the sound of his own voice. When the moneyed set is wondering when Armani introduced its new Bullseye Collection, the SCOAMF's got a problem.

All this is enough to make a stereotypical New York Liberal™ pine for the good old days.

Unprompted, he spends much of our discussion reminiscing about the Reagan presidency.

I bet he does.

Read the whole thing.

posted by Andy at 03:55 PM

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