Below The Beltway

Barack Obama sat down with Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes last night:

President Barack Obama said he believes the global financial system remains at risk of implosion with the failure of Citigroup or AIG, which could touch off “an even more destructive recession and potentially depression.”

His remarks came in a“60 Minutes” interview in which he was pressed by Steve Kroft for laughing and chuckling several times while discussing the perilous state of the world’s economy.

“You’re sitting here. And you’re— you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he’s sitting there just making jokes about money—’ How do you deal with— I mean: explain. . .” Kroft asked at one point.

“Are you punch-drunk?” Kroft said.

“No, no. There’s gotta be a little gallows humor to get you through the day,” Obama said, with a laugh.

Here’s the video of that particular exchange:

Not surprisingly, this has provoked some commentary from some corners of the blogosphere.

Jules Crittenden, for example, isn’t very amused:

Last time anyone enjoyed himself this much in the White House, Bill got impeached and we were out several million bucks worth of cruise missiles. I don’t think we’ll get off that cheap this time.

Elsewhere in the interview, Obama said this:

[H]e defended his embattled Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, telling Kroft that he wouldn’t accept his resignation if he tried to quit. Obama said jokingly that he’d respond: “Sorry Buddy, you’ve still got the job.”

Considering that Geithner seems to be getting near-universal bad reviews right now, that stand-by-your-man strategy, while noble, may turn out to be politically unwise.

This much is clear, though; when it comes to the Obama Administration, the bloom is off the rose. A candidate who projected an air of confidence and competence during the campaign has turned out to be a President who appoints ethically challenged Treasury Secretary’s and hires a staff that conveys a clear sense that they really don’t know what they’re doing, and have no idea if it will really work.

Don’t believe me ? Just this weekend, we saw Paul Krugman criticize the Geithner bank bailout before it was even announced, Thomas Friedman noted the absurd spectacle that Obama’s Washington has become, Frank Rich called the economic crisis Obama’s Katrina Moment, and Maureen Dowd wrote about Obama the way she used to write about George W. Bush:

It’s a time in America’s history where we need less smooth jazz and more martial brass.

Barack Obama prides himself on consensus, soothing warring sides into agreement. But the fury directed at the robber barons by the robbed blind in America has been getting hotter, not cooler. And that’s because the president and his Treasury secretary have been coddling the Wall Street elite, fretting that if they curtail executives’ pay and perks too much, if they make the negotiations with those who siphoned our 401(k)’s too tough, the spoiled Sherman McCoys will run away, the rescue plan will fail and the markets will wither. (Now that Mr. Obama has made $8,605,429 on his books — including $500,000 for letting his memoir be condensed into a kids’ book — maybe he’s lost touch with his hole-in-the-shoe, hole-in-the-Datsun, have-not roots.)

Like I said, the bloom is off the rose, or, to be more blunt about it, the emperor is walking down Pennsylvania Avenue and people are finally starting to realize his buck naked.