Cry Me A River

I was listening to call-in radio for about an hour this afternoon after the bailout bill went down.

What was interesting was the degree to which people — from the most knowledgeable about the financial situation to the least — we’re almost uniformly disgusted by: the hubris of politicians, the failure of elected and appointed officials to communicate coherently with the American people, and, particularly, the sense that Washington and Wall Street are never going to break off the affair.

No matter what kind of fallout lies ahead, I believe these pictures will bring a satisfaction (but no joy) to “folks on Main Street,” simply for the fact the ruling class didn’t get what it wanted.

(One phrase that kept coming up was: “game over.”)

My sense, by the way, is that this hits Bush, in particular — looking like a failure in the eyes of Wall Street — in a way that nothing else has in the past eight years, and that includes those innumerable stiff-upper-lip, we took it for the team, hug-hug-hugs all around sessions with injured warriors and tortuously grieving Iraq War vet families.

(image 1: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters.  Oval Office of the White House in Washington September 29, 2008. image 2: Jim Young/Reuters. Capitol Hill, September 29, 2008)