Obama Clarifies NY Times Interview, Shelby Dance?

"It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question." - Barack Obama to the NY Times

The Political Animal reports on an interview that President Obama gave to the NY Times over the weekend, where they asked him if he was a socialist, and if his policies reflected that. After the interview was over, he called them up again to clarify his answer on the topic.: 

"Obama: Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter. It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question. I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn't under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn't on my watch. And it wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement – the prescription drug plan without a source of funding. And so I think it's important just to note when you start hearing folks through these words around that we've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can't say the same.

Q. So who's watch are we talking about here?

A. Well, I just think it's clear by the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system. And the thing I constantly try to emphasize to people if that coming in, the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it. I have more than enough to do without having to worry the financial system. The fact that we've had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis."

It's bad enough the top Republicans are not coming up with any helpful ideas other than let's have a spending freeze! Throwing mud around and hoping some of it will stick reminds me of the kind of debates my friends and I used to have back in the 8th grade. The level of discourse here hasn't gotten any better...

Talking Points Memo reports on Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, who was on the Sunday morning show On This Week. The interview was on the subject of nationalizing the banks or not: " On This Week this morning, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said he opposed nationalization but thought insolvent banks should be closed down.

Said Shelby: "I don't want to nationalize them, I think we need to close them. Close them down, get them out of business. If they're dead, they ought to be buried. We bury the small banks; we've got to bury some big ones and send a strong message to the market. And I believe that people will start investing [again] in banks."

Something like this is both heartening and insanely distressing at the same time because what exactly does he think people are talking about when people talk about nationalization? They're talking about some form of FDIC-like takeover, though probably one that would take longer and be much more complicated since you simply can't find another bank that is going to buy up most or all of Citi's assets at some knock-down price over the weekend -- certainly not in the present climate. You either clean the bank up (which would require what amounts to a de facto bankruptcy proceeding) and sell it back into private hands or break it up and sell it off in individual pieces -- likely some combination of the two.

It would be one thing if Shelby were just one more Fox News robot. But he's the ranking member of the friggin' Banking Committee." I know, let's call Senator Shelby up and ask him about his earmarks in the $410 billion appropriations bill...