Geithner Wall Street Journal Interview

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Treasury Secretary Geithner comes off as airing some frustration with the American public. "The thing that's been the hardest, is to help people understand what we're trying to do," he said, echoing an earlier comment he had made that banker bonuses are "very hard for people to understand." There is a kind of resonance between this and Jacob Weisberg's complaint about "the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large." And a similarity to President Obama's comment in his State of the Union address that on health care, "I take my share of blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people." I said about the State of Union that Mr. Obama's comments made those skeptical of ObamaCare sound like dense students who, if they had only had a teacher who could explain quadratic equations to them more clearly, might not have flunked math. Mr. Geithner's comments betray some of the same attitude. If the American people don't understand what Mr. Geithner or Mr. Obama are doing, maybe it isn't such a good idea for them to do it.