The SNL Administration

I haven’t watched prime-time TV for 15 years. But I know that back in the day Saturday Night Live developed the concept of “not ready for prime time.” Not that I ever watched the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. (But I did just check Google to make sure I had my facts straight.)

It was common knowledge that the Clinton administration was not ready for prime time in 1993. And now it is looking like the same is true of the Obama administration.

Certainly the Obamites have swung and missed at three pitches in a row. First of all there was the “stimulus” bill that isn’t. Then there was President Obama’s first prime-time press conference. (A non-political friend call and said: R-O-O-K-I-E!)

Now we’ve just had to go through Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s not-read-for-prime-time performance on completing the bank bailout. Writes Larry Kudlow:

On Tuesday morning, stocks opened down about 75 points in the wake of Obama’s pessimism. But stocks really started to tumble when Tim Geithner stepped to the microphone. He totally bombed in his debut.

Geithner had no real plan to deal with the problem of unmarketable toxic assets on bank balance sheets. He offered no new architectural structure, no good way to remove the toxic assets, no clear pricing or funding proposals, and no meat on the bones.

Look. I’m a conservative and a partisan Republican. I have no debt and cash in the bank. What do I care if the Obama administration totally tanks and fails to fix the most important government program of all: the government-run and government-dominated credit system? Hey, all this stumbling and bumbling has energized the Republican base like you couldn’t believe.

(Yes. Forget the idea that the banks are private. Banking has been a government-regulated business since whenever. And it has been totally in the pocket of government ever since the Federal Reserve System was formed in 1913.)

(And if you wonder why bankers get all those bonuses, remember this. State and local government workers earn about 50 percent more that comparable workers in the private sector. So why shouldn’t government sponsored enterprises like the banks earn more than ordinary mortals too?)

But the fact is that the people who are going to be hurt by all this are the Democratic faithful. They are the people who got suckered into mortgage loans they couldn’t afford. The people who work in retail. The people who work at the less desirable trades in construction.

So I do care. And I wish that the Obama administration would get its act together, stop playing politics, and get the economy back on track. It’s not that hard. First of all, we’ve got to do Stage 2 of the bank bailout. We’ve got to get the bad loans off the books of the banks. We did that after the S&L meltdown (another Democratic program that went south). Secondly, it wouldn’t hurt to throw a lifeline to small business. Try something like a cut in the FICA tax, the tax on jobs. Try lowering the corporate income tax rate.

But let’s do one thing right now. Let’s stop throwing money at the Democratic establishment. They get 20 percent of GDP to play with already, and have just about zero accountability. So why load ’em up with more? They’ll just waste it.