There’s hardly a problem in America today Barack Obama can’t blame on a corporation. They’re the whipping boys for everything from $4-a-gallon gasoline to soaring healthcare costs – Obama’s drawn a bulls eye on corporate lobbyists and voters are cheering him on.

 

So it came as a shock – politically – to open the newspaper and read, right there on the front page, another article about CEOs’ getting $80 million or $100 million bonuses again this year.

 

Back when corporations were making money in boatloads CEOs had a case when they argued tying executive compensation to performance – even if it did mean hundred-million-dollar bonuses – made sense. Now the corporations are hemorrhaging cash and the CEOs are arguing the salaries are justified because they’re dealing with one heck of a crisis.

 

They are. But you’d think they’d stop long enough to look around and figure out they’re also going to pay a price for making just about every voter in America mad at them; stigmatizing yourself by proving you can repeat the excess of The Gilded Age may not be the better part of wisdom in a modern internet-driven democracy.

 

After all, when voters get good and mad there are always plenty of politicians – whole parties full of them – happy to turn that anger into a political weapon. The other night this professor on Bill Moyer’s TV show was almost giddy about the prospect of the Democratic Party rediscovering its ‘populist roots’ this election.

 

Now, what exactly does ‘populist roots’ mean?

 

It means the politicians get together and screw the corporations.

 

For instance, McCain’s arguing to cut taxes on corporations and Obama’s arguing to cut them on working people and paying CEOs $80 million pretty much cuts the ground right out from under McCain as far as voters go.

 

This is a shooting war – between corporations and politicians – the politicians can hardly lose.

 

Pretty soon – say by January – CEOs may find themselves facing a whole new set of crises. Crises called excess profits taxes. And bundles of new regulations. And they’ll be scrambling to convince Obama voters their particular corporation is not one of the villains who needs to be singled out for special treatment.

 

The other day, in a blog, Gary mentioned two doctors who were talking about politics and healthcare a while back.

 

One doctor said: Well, I’m not interested in politics.

 

And the other said: Well, politics is interested in you.

 

Corporate America is an undisputed genius when it comes to making money – but has a hard time seeing beyond the end of its own sandbox on most anything else. It hasn’t figured out politics is now interested in it. Or that paying hundred-million-dollar salaries is just pouring gas on a political fire that’s already strong enough to elect a couple dozen new Barack Obamas to the U.S. House and Senate.

 

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