BIRNBAUM: Obama’s populist attack machine backfires

President Obama came to the White House promising change. He pledged bipartisanship, transparency and broad-based cooperation in a town that lacked all three.

As it turns out, he didn’t carry through on any of them, cooperation in particular. And that shortcoming could be his downfall.

The president has tried occasionally to be a conciliator. His “beer summit” on the South Lawn was a promising start.

But that kumbaya moment quickly devolved into a long series of confrontations. He has made a habit of selecting “bad guys” and hammering them hard in his public utterances. He also keeps a list of friends whom he showers with compliments and special deals.

Picking sides is nothing new in politics, but the way Mr. Obama has gone about it has undercut his fundamental appeal.

His latest target is the banks - big banks in particular. He wants to impose a fee on major financial institutions that would raise $90 billion over 10 years. The reason for the levy is contrived.

Mr. Obama claims the fee is needed to make sure banks pay back the money the federal government lent them during last year’s financial meltdown. In fact, the banks are obliged to pay back that money with interest, and many already have done so.

Banks that haven’t returned the money are still feeling the pain of world-wide recession and are, therefore, the last companies Washington should want to burden with extra costs. Economic recovery depends on banks’ lending freely again; saddling them with a hefty tax only makes that harder.

But the president saw a chance to deliver a populist appeal and stuck the pitchfork in. Banks are primed for such vilification because many of them have rebounded impressively and are shelling out billions in bonuses to top executives and recording profits of billions more.

It’s easy to demagogue Wall Street fat cats in prosperous times. During hard times like these, it’s a layup. So Mr. Obama took the expedient route and proposed a “responsibility fee” that will be difficult for even stalwart Wall Street backers to oppose.

His decision is part of a pattern. He has tried repeatedly to inflict pain on the moneyed interests that average Americans can readily be incited to resent.

Indeed, Mr. Obama has chosen his enemies with care. During the election of 2008, he routinely bludgeoned health insurers and drug companies. He stopped berating the pharmaceuticals when they pledged millions to back his top priority, health reform. The insurers remain a convenient whipping boy, disliked as they are by anyone who’s ever had a claim rejected.

Lobbyists also have been on the president’s bad-boy roster. And why not? Almost no one has sympathy for people who are paid to represent narrow interests before the U.S. government.

Other groups and industries have or will soon feel this same populist wrath. If the cold winter continues to push up oil and gasoline prices, oil companies are sure to report massive profits, which, in turn, will lead to renewed calls for a windfall profits tax.

To the extent the Obama administration opens offshore sites to oil and gas drilling, royalty payments also could be beefed up by opportunistic Obama allies.

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