PERFECT WAY TO PUT IT - AT 7:01 A.M. ET:  From Michael Goodwin, in the New York Daily News:

For sheer chutzpah, it would be hard to top the scene on Capitol Hill yesterday. As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner vowed to go after wealthy Americans who shield money in tax havens, the man wielding the chairman's gavel in the House Ways and Means hearing was Democrat Charlie Rangel.

Perfect together. Geithner and Rangel are two peas in a pod when it comes to dodging their own taxes, and neither is embarrassed about demanding others pay up.

Their certainty about what's good for the rest of us, combined with their sense of privilege about their own shady conduct, perfectly illustrates the real deficit in Washington. More than the budget gap, the trust deficit is causing doubts about President Obama's big-government grab.    

COMMENT:  Some new polls show increased concern about the Obama economic policies, although the president himself remains immensely popular.  We saw something of the same poll pattern during the Reagan administration.  Popular presidents tend to get reelected, even if the public has doubts about their policies.

March 4, 2009