Is he part of the problem or the solution?

In February, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was quoted telling a Wall Street Journal chief executives’ conference: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." Emanuel went on to explain the administration’s view with these words:  "Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

Let’s take a moment to ponder what Emanuel said. While we have been worrying about our country, the economy, our futures and the futures of those we love, the Obama team has simply viewed the current national and global economic crisis as a golden opportunity to set its agenda.  Are they with us or against us?

In  his State of the Union message, Obama tied our economy to his agenda with these words: “The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank. We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for…. Now is the time to jump-start job creation, restart lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that's what I'd like to talk to you about tonight.”

Charles Krauthammer pokes holes in the administration’s argument in a Washington Post op-ed that appeared this week: “At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the banking industry. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful home buyers. The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe. And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing-in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.”

As Rome burns, Obama fiddles rather than deliver a plan. Why is that? For our answer, let’s remember that Obama has studied Saul Alinsky, the "father of modern American radicalism." Rule 9 of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Rule 9 underscores that the threat of dire consequences can poison the mind and demoralize the spirit. In other words, perception is reality, and imagination can often dream up more consequences than reality actually provides. As we fretted over the threat of an economic Tsunami, the Obama Team knew our imaginations were making us uncomfortable and that we hungered for a plan.

Obama outlined his agenda in the State of the Union message, but the markets' most recent dive was a direct effect of the Obama administration’s decision not to provide a clearly delineated bank rescue plan. We don’t like what we are hearing. We also don’t like what we are sensing, the notion that our newly elected POTUS, despite the goodwill extended to him, is using the financial crisis to create fear in order to push his socialist agenda.

As Krauthammer stressed in his op-ed, “Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.”

Although President Obama’s popularity remains high, people are beginning to wonder whether his agenda is hurting us, by creating uncertainty and doubt that could prolong the current recession. Time will tell.