Why The Hedge Fund Managers Hate Obama So

Interesting analysis, based on the TNR article:

But one that I found particularly arresting and convincing is that the very thing that helped Obama win their support originally—his intellectual/demographic similarity—now threatens them. Right, Obama might have been their classmate. Was their classmate in some cases (as he reminded some of them during a meeting in 2010). And that was the problem—Obama was asking them—in his cool Obama way, not in FDR’s almost maliciously naughty, “I welcome their hatred” way—to demonstrate some social solidarity, some noblesse oblige. And this pushed all the wrong buttons. As MacGillis writes, “That, in between his relatively measured lines about tax codes and financial reform, he was delivering an unmistakable moral judgment about the worth of the profession they had chosen. That the story they were telling themselves about their own lives was highly questionable.” Yes, they had chosen one life. And this guy they had played basketball with at Harvard had done just fine—he was president!—but he had chosen another life. He taught law, did community organizing, and didn’t dedicate himself to making a billion bucks per year or more (literally in the case of the top 40 or so hedge fund managers, something Obama also pointed out to them at the 2010 meeting). By liberal blogospheric lights, Obama isn’t enough of a lefty. But by the standards of his old hedge fund buddies, Obama enrages them because he shames them.

And it is interesting to compare this dynamic to what FDR confronted from the superrich of his presidency. Back then, old WASP wealth dominated the banking and financial industries. It wasn’t, for the most part, “earned” meritocratic wealth. And thus oddly enough, FDR, like Obama, knew these guys from the school—he was from the old money WASP aristocracy, too. He blew off his Harvard classes to go sailing—just like a lot of them must have. After all, they were going to stay rich, no matter what—they didn’t need to graduate Harvard with honors. FDR thought most rich people were, like himself prior to polio, fatuous, lazy toffs. The rich had never impressed him, he thought they were sort of lazy fools. But then, after he became governor and then president, his laughter became more cutting, and he realized he couldn’t let them smugly continue to destroy the country.

Today, the rich are very impressed with themselves based upon self-perceived merit, not their families of origin. And they thought that Obama, being a fellow meritocrat, would be impressed with them, too. They earned it—just like the president—so, surely, he would admire them, and would never call them fat cats (verbal criticisms stings these guys as much or more than policy proposals that affect their wallets). So, yeah, they thought Obama was like them—and he is, sort of, that’s the funny thing—and now they’re mad he called them out in the pretty minimal way he did. What the hedge funders don’t seem to realize is that, while Obama doesn’t respect them all that much, he respects their meritocratic achievement—and, therefore, his own—just enough not to have the full throated, glib contempt for them that FDR had for his wealthy peer group.