National Review’s Jim Geraghty has a long-running joke that all promises issued by President Obama should come with an implicit expiration date. Geraghty’s well-documented thesis gets another footnote today, as the New York Times reports that the Obama Administration has officially reversed course and now supports the inclusion of carbon tariffs in the soon-to-be-released Senate green jobs legislation

Do today’s Americans suffer a lack of access, or even shrinking access, to industrial production? Would our economy be strengthened by policies or trends that force surgeons, software engineers, airline pilots, gourmet chefs and other service-sector workers back to toiling away, as their parents and grandparents did, in factories and in mines? If someone you care about suffers a serious illness, would you prefer an America full of sawmills and seamstresses or one planted thick with doctors, nurses and pharmaceutical researchers?

So the vote on the SEC to bring charges against Goldman broke down by party lines. Liberals, understandably, view this as evidence of malfeasance. But of course, there’s an alternative interpretation also consistent with these facts: that Democrats brought a weak charge that won’t stand up in court because they thought it would help them push through their bank reform. One piece of evidence in favor of this: none of the people I know who are familiar with securities law think that the government has a strong case; the opinions range from “seriously pushing the envelope” to “give me a break”.

Taking the Burkian stance that any long standing social institution probably has a logic to it that isn’t immediately obvious, I wonder if large quantities of relatively safe gov’t debt is needed for developed markets to function? Perhaps investors will be too risk adverse without the comfort of knowing if times really get rough they can always park their nest eggs in Treasuries and take a breather.

There’s a different way to think about the bailouts, namely that the U.S. government stands at the center of a giant nexus of money raising, most of all to finance the U.S. government budget deficit and keep the whole show up and running. The perception at least is that our country requires the dollar as a reserve currency, requires New York City as a major banking center with major banks, and requires fully credible governmental guarantees behind every Treasury auction and requires liquid financial markets more generally. Furthermore the international trade presence of the United States (supposedly) requires the federal government to strongly ally with major commercial interests, just as our government sides with Hollywood in trade and intellectual property disputes. To abandon banks is to send a broader message that we are in commercial and political decline and disarray, and that is hardly an acceptable way to proceed, at least not according to the standards of the real Washington consensus. In other words, it’s our government deciding to assemble a cooperative ruling coalition - which includes banks – at the heart of its fiscal core. It’s our government deciding who belongs to this coalition and who does not, mostly for reasons of political expediency and also a perception - correct or not – of what is best for the welfare of American voters. If we don’t in this year “get tough” with banking regulation, it’s because our government itself doesn’t want to, not because of some stubborn recalcitrant Republicans.

So much is being written in the mainstream media about who the tea partiers are, but very little is being recorded about what these folks are actually saying.

I actually recommend listening to the first hour of the hearing if you want to get a sense of how clumsy the government becomes when a program that sounds good in theory actually comes face to face with reality. And to see how once government starts down the road of trying to “fix” the market, it just keeps fixing and fixing, without ever stepping back and asking whether the efforts are actually constructive.