Impressive And Gratifying

by digby

I don’t know how many of you saw the giddy reception that President Bush received on the floor of the NY stock exchange last week, but it was one for the books. It was captured best by CNN, which carried it live. Their Wall Street reporter came pretty close to climaxing on live television:

PHILLIPS: Well, normally, Susan Lisovicz is the most exciting thing on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, but she has a little competition today — Susan.

SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, in the 214 years of the New York Stock Exchange, the world’s biggest exchange has seen a lot of famous people — world leaders, CEOs, athletes — but only one sitting president of the United States came during trading hours. That was Ronald Reagan in 1985.

That is changing at this moment. President George W. Bush, we believe, has just entered the building, and he may pass right behind me. Of course, the president of the United States using Wall Street as his stage to talk about his economic policy, and there’s a lot to talk about that is quite favorable to the Bush administration.

We’ve had 7.2 million jobs created since 2003. The jobless rate historically low, 4.5 percent. We just got the first look at the fourth quarter GDP coming in better than expected at 3.5 percent.

Of course, the stock market itself has been hitting record after record. We’ve been talking about it for the last couple months. Gas prices have been getting lower. And certainly, that is something that the president wants to talk about, Kyra.

And I can tell you that I think the reception that he will get here on Wall Street will be a little bit more enthusiastic than perhaps the reception he gets with the new Democratic majority in Congress.

The president saying today and, certainly, leading up to this visit, that he will certainly try his best to make sure that there are no tax increases. That is something that investors favor. They also like the fact that President Bush has been a proponent of more liberal trade policies. That is something that he’s talked about earlier this week when he visited the headquarters of Caterpillar in Peoria — East Peoria, Illinois…

PHILLIPS: We can actually see a wide shot now of all the reporters. Has everything just come to a standstill as everybody awaits the president?

LISOVICZ: That is a very good point. This is a — the world’s biggest stock market, Kyra, and for the last 30 minutes, trading has just about come to a halt. It’s extremely quiet. People are very excited.

I can see traders holding baseballs, baseballs in their hands for the president to sign. They’re just very excited about the president coming here. This is a very rare occasion, and it’s a historic moment.

And the one thing about this is there are people on this trading floor, there are people and they’re excited about someone.

PHILLIPS: Like the guys right there next to you.

LISOVICZ: Exactly. I know…

PHILLIPS: Can you talk to them? Ask these guys, are these some of the traders to your left, Susan?

LISOVICZ: Yes. How do you feel about the president of the United States?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’m excited to see him. I’m excited to see him. The president of the United States, one of the greatest presidents we have…

LISOVICZ: OK, Kyra, I’m hearing a lot of applause right now, a lot of — a lot of people cheering. And I don’t know if you can see me anymore…

PHILLIPS: Actually, I can see the president right now, Susan. He’s actually — and I’m not quite sure where you are in proximity — in…

LISOVICZ:…It’s a very — it’s a very big buildup to a very big visit, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, I can imagine. And I’ll give you an idea of what’s going on right now. Everybody is flocked around him, Susan. He’s shaking hands with all the various traders. And you can see the Secret Service is, of course, all around him, and kind of working him through the crowd.

…And you mentioned the last president to come visit the New York Stock Exchange — there’s only been two, right? Ronald Reagan, and now president Bush.

LISOVICZ: That’s correct.

PHILLIPS: What kind of effect did Reagan have when he came to visit? Is this — do you think this is more of a P.R. move, or does this really affect things economically, trading wise, investor wise? I mean, what type of effect do you think this has truly outside of a P.R. move?

LISOVICZ: President Reagan was here in 1985 during trading hours. Kyra, he actually came again in ’92 with Mikhail Gorbachev, but he came to talk about his economic policy. And he’s absolutely beloved on Wall Street, as you can imagine.

And it’s almost stating the obvious that — that this is his audience. This is a conservative crowd. This is the kind of community where less government intervention is something that is applauded. Lower taxes, that’s something that investors like. More trade policies, that’s something investors like. They want to see it translate to the bottom line…

PHILLIPS: Can you see him?

LISOVICZ: I see — I see the — yes, I do see him. I see his gray head. I’m getting pushed back, but I’m…

PHILLIPS: What do you want to know from the president, Susan?

LISOVICZ: I would like to know what he thinks he can achieve with the majority — with the Congress he can no longer count on to support him in terms of some of the policies he’s proposing.

I don’t know if you can hear that, Kyra. There’s a chant of “Bush, Bush, Bush”, and here he comes.

PHILLIPS: All right. We’re going to let you try and get the moment, Susan. Go ahead.

LISOVICZ: He’s about 15 feet away, and he’s shaking hands. He looks like he’s in good spirits. And he has plenty of people who are trying to expedite his walk. Almost like a gauntlet, but it’s a very friendly gauntlet.

PHILLIPS: I can imagine. It’s a tough time right now. Everything has been centered on Iraq and the Iraq strategy and what is he going to do as he appoints his new head for the military commands in Iraq and Afghanistan and that region. He always seems…

LISOVICZ: Five feet away, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: OK. Go for it, Susan.

LISOVICZ: President Bush, welcome to Wall Street. Welcome to Wall Street.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good to be here, thanks.

LISOVICZ: What do you think of the reception here?

BUSH: I’m impressed and grateful.

I’ll bet.

If you can believe it, it goes on like that for ten more minutes at least. Read the transcript if you want to see the complete giggly insanity, (but you have to see the video to get the full effect.)

I was reminded of this apalling display this morning when I read Rick Perlstein’s review of Terry McAuliffe’s new book in today’s NY Times.

McAuliffe taught Democrats that to win they had to learn to play with the billionaires. But there were, as the economists say, “opportunity costs.” In 400 pages of blow-by-blow, one momentous event passes with barely a whisper: the 2002 elections. Some hoped that President Bush’s ties to Enron would make 2002 a Democratic year. Instead, Democrats lost the Senate. As the televised face of the party, McAuliffe got in some hard punches on Enron, but Republicans replied that he himself had made an $18 million profit from a mere $100,000 investment in the controversial communications company Global Crossing.

Sour grapes, McAuliffe insists, quoting his comeback to Sean Hannity: “What are you, jealous or something? … It was a great company.”

…You might say the more proximate wrongdoing was going on TV in an election year in which corporate greed was the Democrats’ best issue and saying a company that had only not quite swindled millions of pensioners and individual investors was “great” — and then being so un-self-aware as to brag about it in your memoir.

That group on the stock exchange floor is Bush’s real base and he’s been tremendously successful for them. But their loyalty has less to do with sheer self-interest than people think. That little display on the floor of the stock exchange shows how out of touch with reality those moneyed interests have become. The stock market may have finally recovered, and perhaps these guys aren’t paying the high taxes they might be, but the world is going to hell in a handbasket and this simpleton of a president is spending the country into oblivion on crazy wars that could cause more long term damage to American business than any tax or regulation ever could. Talk about being unable to see the forest for the trees.

This is a tribal identification as strong as southern evangelicals or Berkeley liberals, and no matter how much Terry McAuliffe wines and dines these folks, they do not identify with working people and an activist government. It’s fine with me to take their money, but a big mistake to fail to calculate the costs of depending too strongly on it.

Perlstein points out that the two great Democratic populists, FDR and LBJ, may have travelled easily in moneyed circles, but they used their power to influence business not the other way around.

McAuliffe says in his book:

“People ask me all the time what the trick to fund-raising is. They always want to hear that there is some secret. But it’s simple enough, and I’ll spell it out in black and white: As a fund-raiser you’re selling belief. You’re selling vision. You’re selling hope. You’re selling dreams.”

Perlstein says: The question is: what dreams, and whose?

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