Wrapping himself in the mantle of Theodore Roosevelt's "National Greatness" agenda, President Obama urged the nation to stand strong and unite behind ... his umpteenth regulatory czar. Nothing symbolizes American strength and vigor more than another unaccountable Washington bureaucrat.
If Richard Cordray, the stalled White House nominee to enforce the Dodd-Frank financial bureaucracy, is not approved, the wheedler-in-chief warned in Osawatomie, Kan.: "Every day we go without a consumer watchdog in place is another day when a student or a senior citizen or member of our Armed Forces could be tricked into a loan they can't afford — something that happens all the time."
In Obama's America, you see, "greatness" springs from vastly expanding government power to shield every last borrower in the country from poor financial behavior.
Senate Republicans have vowed to block Cordray or any other candidate for the job until key reforms are made to the sweeping law and its half-billion-dollar enforcement arm, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The common-sense changes include subjecting the CFPB to the congressional appropriations process instead of the Federal Reserve; restoring independent judicial review; ensuring that it takes into account the impact of new rules on the safety and soundness of financial institutions; and creating a bipartisan oversight board instead of a single director to run the agency.
Obama himself supported such a panel — before he opposed and demagogued it. As it stands, the bureau remains under the Treasury Department. The minute a director is sworn in, the agency will transfer to the Fed for administrative purposes, but will effectively have free rein. The Fed's authority over it is illusory. And it would be impossible for the Dodd-Frank czar to be removed by a change of administration, because his term is five years and his tenure protected.
While crusading as a consumer watchdog who'll take on Wall Street, Cordray (whom voters booted from the Ohio Attorney General's Office last fall) is tight with securities class-action lawyers. As Daniel Fisher at Forbes Magazine reported, Cordray has a record of "taking money from lawyers who profit from private litigation that often follows closely on the heels of government investigations." In other words: exactly the kind of cozy crony relationships that created our financial crisis in the first place.
As for Cordray's ability to police shady behavior by others, his own record as Ohio attorney general raises more doubts than it allays. When local papers spotlighted shady campaign account-shifting involving nearly $800,000, even a liberal Ohio Citizen Action leader responded: "I'm sure he's following the letter of the law. It's certainly not following the spirit of the law."
A vote on Cordray is scheduled for Thursday, and the White House doesn't have the support to secure a filibuster-proof approval. Thus, the taxpayer-funded barnstorming tour this week (which just happens to provide a handy pretext for targeting GOP senators in seven swing states).
But Obama's radical supporters aren't about to let the deliberative process stand in their way. They're pushing the president to follow in TR's footsteps and ram Cordray through by recess appointment. The George Soros-funded propaganda outfit Think Progress led the rallying cry. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt recess-appointed 160 officials during a recess of less than one day. "Such an appointment would not be without political controversy — but would likely be upheld as legal given the Roosevelt precedent," a Soros operative opined. "Simply put, it's time for President Obama to speak softly and carry a big stick."
Obama has been thwacking the economy with a Chicago-crafted billy club and wielding brass knuckles against critics, whistleblowers and true regulatory reformers for the past three years. Memo to the White House: This is not what TR meant when he used his favorite phrase: "Bully!"
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
