Conspicuous Consumption

Dan Collins in The Conservatory

To that, I’d add Obama’s own bizarre inability to keep his conspicuous consumption under wraps. I don’t really understand it, either, from a guy who was all about the optics during his campaign, but this demagoguing of fat cats while having pizza flown in from Chicago, snarfing wagyu, golfing frequently, decking out his wife (and her insanely large entourage) in designer crap, eschewing Camp David for expensive vacation destinations, and all the rest of it sends the message that this guy doesn’t give a gangster’s ass about consistency. It’s hard to read a guy like that, and clearly his advisers have no influence over any belt-tightening he mistakenly may regard as lese majeste.