The full transcript of the interview with President Barack Obama by former Bill Clinton campaign worker and staffer George Stephanopoulos is at this link. I had written elsewhere yesterday on some of the excerpts that had been released. Other than those highlights, there’s really not so much more in the interview that is significant. At no point does George S. really pin the president down, allowing him instead to just blather in general terms and do the whole “don’t I sound so moderate and reasonable” thing to the nth degree, as is his wont. That was enough to get him elected, of-course; the crucial independent swing-voters wanted a “post-partisan” practical problem solver and Barack Obama succeeded in making himself sound like that.

The difference now, however, is that Obama has a record he can neither run from nor gloss over, as he did in the campaign. He has a full year of being president, and those same independent swing voters can see what he’s been doing and what the results have been. Now, Obama’s detached, super-reasonable-comforting-ultra-mild tone is quickly becoming not an advantage but a liability. It doesn’t fit with the reality of the situation. Obama risks not only being seen as dishonest in his specific arguments, but as being utterly phoney. When he takes the stage for his State of the Union address next week, it will be a very different kind of audience than the one which watched his inauguration a year ago. The same people to a great degree, of-course, but very different in how they will be perceiving Barack Obama.

With the economy continuing to spiral downwards, with unemployment continuing to increase, with home foreclosures rolling onwards, energy prices up, and on and on, the focus will be on President Obama, and the questions in the minds of voters will be: What have you done about it? And what are you going to do about it? President Obama has no good answers to either question. Certainly, the result in Massachusetts showed that voters do not like what he’s been doing, and their predisposition is not to trust where he is headed either.

The president wanted at least to be able, in his State of the Union, to talk about a health care bill that had been passed, and to promise airily that this would certainly be making everything better for everybody real soon. That was really about all of substance that he had to hang his State of the Union upon; that would be the major achievement of his first year. That is now gone.

Going back to the interview with George S., however, we can see the signs as to what Obama’s fallback is going to be. It’s right here:

Now if I tell them, “Well, it turns out that we will actually have gotten TARP paid back and that we’re going to make sure that a fee’s imposed on the big banks, so that this thing will cost taxpayers not a dime,” that’s helpful.

Obama doesn’t want to be the bogeyman into which he finds himself being transformed. Having nothing positive to use to deflect that perception, however, he is going to go negative, and attempt to shift the ire of the voters onto the banks. And of-course many people are unhappy with how the banking industry has conducted itself; but do they ultimately blame the banks for all aspects of the crumbling economy? I don’t think so.

But for a real insight into how Obama’s mind works — and liberal Democrats generally, I’m afraid — consider what the president is saying in that excerpt above. He’s promising to impose fees on the banks, so that all of the TARP is paid back, and “so that this thing will cost taxpayers not a dime.” He thinks taxpayers will be happy about this. Here’s the question: In what sense other than in Obama’s own mind will imposing a fee on banks save the ordinary taxpayer any money at all? Is he talking about sending taxpayers a rebate? No. Is he talking about cutting taxes? No.(In fact, as the Bush tax cuts expire, there are only tax increases coming down the line.)

President Obama actually believes that by taking money from the “big banks” in fees and absorbing it into the black hole of the U.S. Treasury, that he can make taxpayers happy — that this is a “repayment” that pleases and helps the average American. It is a warped view of the economy, with priorities exactly backwards, that is unfortunately standard and typical of liberal Democrats. The collection of more taxes and fees by the U.S. government is not an objective good that benefits all; most especially when that money is being poured down the drain with crazy spending plans. What benefits the U.S. economy is more money in the hands of real people — more money in private hands, more money being spent buying real goods and services that real people actually want.

To the extent that Obama succeeds in imposing more fees on banks, the expense will only ultimately get passed back onto the consumer, by the banks, one way or another. Turning the banking industry into the biggest bogeyman — were the strategy to succeed — would only be to create a self-destructive narrative in the U.S. economy. But I don’t think the strategy will succeed. The voters have heard President Obama talk and talk and talk from the White House for a year now, and promise many things — beginning with the creation of millions of jobs through that 800 billion dollar “stimulus” package — but the results they have seen have simply sapped their credulousness and their good will.

He has a big hill to climb in this State of the Union speech, but I’m afraid that after one year in office, instead of wearing mountain boots, President Obama is standing at the bottom dressed only in roller skates.

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