Mr. Irrelevant

It's not just about bad banking.

President Barack Obama's biting criticism of big banks frames the problem as a struggle between jobless, suffering Americans and banks making big profits and paying "obscene" bonuses.

It's populism straight out of Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," and it aims to score political points in the midst of a weak economic recovery that is fueling public doubts about the president's own economic policies.

Obama proposed a 10-year, $90 billion tax on the largest financial institutions on Thursday, saying he wanted the money to back any shortfall in the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program launched to bail out foundering firms at the height of the financial crisis.

. . . Whether his plan stands a chance in Congress remains to be seen. House leaders and rank-and-file liberals cheered the bank tax. In the Senate, Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., also welcomed the plan. But Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Senate tax-writing Finance Committee, was more cautious.

. . . So, prospects of actual passage aside, the real impact of Obama's vocal stance is that it draws unfavorable attention to Wall Street just as the public learns that the bailed-out financial institutions are now on such sound footing that they are declaring profits and paying bonuses.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100114/ap_on_an/us_obama_bank_fees_analysis

Obama is now reduced to announcing proposals he knows have no chance of adoption, but may get him some good publicity.

That's not governing. That's running for reelection.