Never Mind Governing: Celebrity President Obama Goes Global with his Campaign Operation

Barack Obama, our celebrity president, has gone global these past few days with his extended campaign operation. (Locally he’s appeared on Leno and 60 Minutes and this evening he’s scheduled for a nationally televised press conference.) Mr. Obama sent a video of himself to Iran and today, March 24, 2009, more than 30 papers around the world ran his op-ed arguing for "the urgent need for global economic cooperation."

The NY Times was not among the 30 papers that carried Obama’s op-ed; instead, its editorial board has a few stern words for Geithner’s bank rescue plan 2.0 that hit the airwaves yesterday.

The Times editorial concludes with these words:

In other banking crises, both in this country and abroad, resolution of a systemwide problem has sooner or later involved separating solvent banks from insolvent banks. In the end, there is no getting around firing the executives at failing banks, acknowledging the losses, wiping out the shareholders and then deciding how the government can best restructure the institutions. The Obama administration has yet to explain why its approach is better than that.

P.S.

According to the WSJ, Geithner released his rescue plan after a weekend in which Obama toned down criticism of the financial sector to win backing for the plan, and Geithner worked the phones to assure executives that bonuses wouldn't be targeted retroactively for tax penalties.

Hmm, that would explain the Dow’s uptick yesterday.