He has gloated about the Obamacare ‘victory’ and gotten an attitude about the tax day protests just in the last few weeks.  He’s called out private citizens, and the Supreme Court.  He creates straw men faster than a robotic scarecrow production line, if there were such a thing.

So what is it that causes our President, the man previously termed as ‘cool’, even by people that would call themselves conservatives, to behave in what seems like such an uncool way?  This was a post-intellectual, a uniter not a divider.  So what do we call this aggressive, some might say defensive, demeanor?

Theory One:  Sports talk.  People talk trash during the game.  I am a weekend warrior of many years, and have both the scars and osteoarthritis pain medication to prove it.  People trash talk during the game.   Ninety-plus percent of the time it means nothing.  I do it.  After the game we shake hands; the next time we see each other we chat like old friends.  Fifteen minutes after the game starts we’re at it again.  So is the President trash talking?  In which case we dish it right back to him in equal proportion and nobody takes it personally?

Theory Two:  The President really believes what he is saying.  He actually thinks he should be thanked for  tax credits.  He thinks that when people said Obamacare would be ‘armageddon’ that  they actually thought the healthcare system would seize up like the tranny of a ’57 Buick the very next morning.  People actually did believe nothing should be done about everything his strawman whispered to him they wanted to do nothing about.  In other words, the world really is as simple a place as he seems to think it is and anyone that opposes him really is that stupid.

Theory Three:  He is mad as hell about being challenged and opposed and pushed back on.  This is the antithesis of theory 1, in some ways.  He is not trash talking – he really means it.  It is personal, not part of the game.  In which case people that oppose him are the enemy.  Not the political opponent, but someone to be feared and reviled and disliked and defeated.  It’s been said before – this President does not seem to be used to being challenged and pushed back on.  Perhaps the greatest disservice the press did this country was not challenging Obama the candidate enough to either make him behave this way in the election so people saw the behavior, or get him used to being criticized.  The White House is not a good place for someone unused to getting hammered on a daily basis.

If theory one or even two is the case, then it’s politics as usual.  If this is just a friendly fight and we are all Americans together in the end, then let’s talk trash and dunk on each other and go have a beer afterward and do the same thing in tomorrow’s game.  If they think we just don’t get it, then okay.  I am pretty sure they are the ones that don’t.   I don’t think it’s unusual for someone to think their opposition is just not bright.

Theory Three kind of scares me, because it means there is a President in office that believes a large portion of the citizenry is his enemy.  Not his political opposition, but his enemy.  I guess it’s possible that the President is drecting this mocking and ultimately this anger at the conservative political class, including some people in the media, and it doesn’t extend to the common citizen.   Maybe that’s better, but maybe not, because those politicians that oppose his policies represent people that do so as well.

We are divided in many ways, of course.  There are numerous little fault lines that separate us into one faction or another, but most are not important enough to separate us on core principles.  But when the divide becomes big – and it seems like it is getting big now, in some ways – and the country is split all the way up to President on the big principles and he is picking sides on the big principles, then who is it that brings us back together on those big principles? 

All Presidents pick one side of an issue, of course.  But I can’t recall a President that didn’t attempt to unite the division within the country around a controversial issue, that didn’t try to bring both sides together once the decision was made (not that he would have had much success in the last year or so).  Hopefully all the talk presages nothing more than just an inexperienced President forgetting that like it or not, he leads a whole country, not just the half that agrees with him.

Reading this through, maybe I’ve answered my own question.  The changes proposed by this administration are so inimical to many Americans that no amount of uniting talk is going to get us to unite.  It doesn’t matter how it is presented, there isn’t an argument that is going to make me like the just-passed healthcare bill.  You are never going to get us to like, or even accept, trillion-dollar deficits and tax increases as far as the eye can see, and a more and more intrusive role for the government.

We are split on some big issues, and we are likely to stay split, and there’s no doubt right now which side the President is on as far as those issues are concerned.  And that’s good, I guess.  At least we know where he stands.

Having worked for most of the last three decades in the finance organizations of really big American companies, I have some familiarity with SEC reporting, though I am far from an expert.   I’m going to guess this puts me ahead of everyone in the Obama White House, as well as Henry Waxman.

An 8K has to be filed whenever an event occurs that in the companies judgment would be important to the investment community.  So asset impairments, changes to senior executive management or the board of directors, plant closings, etc., are all things that would trigger an 8K.  There’s an actual list of events, but as with any long list there’s a category called ‘other events’ that is intended to pick up everything the list makers didn’t think of, such as a Healthcare law that takes away a tax benefit related to reimbursed Medicare expenses, which seems like such a MINOR thing unless you have a lot of retirees, like ATT for instance.

Would a reasonable investor care about a $1B non-cash charge against earnings that the company is required to take to conform to accounting rules?  Most probably would – I guess some wouldn’t, but this is one of those situations where prudence comes to the top.  If you are a senior finance officer of a company and you’re responsible for SEC reporting, your current recurring nightmare goes something like this:

SEC Auditors:  So….this new healthcare law is going to reduce your tax benefits by $1B over the measurable future.  Did you take this into account in your last public earnings release?

Senior Finance Exec:  Uh, no.  You know, we just didn’t know for sure, and I voted for the president and all, so I just decided to kinda let it ride.

SEC Auditors:  We see.  Do you believe that perhaps a reasonable investor would have considered this useful information?

Senior Finance Exec:  Well, I guess it depends on who they voted for….

SEC  Auditors:  Of course, regulation FD is pretty clear on this.  It was a known tax change.  You should have disclosed it via a form 8K.

Senior Finance Exec:  Uh, sorry about that?

SEC Auditors:  We’d like to introduce you to our tailor, Mr Smith.

Senior Finance Exec:  Oh, that’s okay.  You know, we went business casual a few years back and ever since then for me it’s been you know, nice slacks, a dress shirt, maybe a blazer every so often.  My guy handles it just great.

SEC Auditors:  Mr Smith makes only one item of clothing.  It’s a jumpsuit.  In orange. 

(Mr Smith whips out a tape measure)

Mr Smith:  The inseam first, if you don’t mind…..

Sr Finance Exec:  Oh, no!

All kidding aside, I don’t know that ATT and CAT really have much of a choice, no matter who they voted for.  A change in the tax law is a known and measurable thing, and while I’m sure there’s some actuarial estimate embedded in the number, it’s not a question of whether or not there’s a cost, it’s just a question of ‘how much’.  If the impact is material, which is another estimate that can get a little fuzzy, then making the knowledge publicly available is not a viable option.

It would surprise me if these things don’t happen a lot more often - 8K announcements from public companies as the impacts of Obamacare become better known, followed by a summons from Congress.  It’s too bad Congress doesn’t realize the law they just passed has a financial impact.  Or maybe they do.

It’s like when your town’s last place NFL team plays the Superbowl champs.  How much emotional energy are you ready to expend knowing they are likely to get hammered?  Hopefully not that much.  But I expend the energy anyway, get involved in the game, then when they lose I walk around the house with a black cloud over my head for a period of time till I get over it.

It’s emotion at war with intellect.  It’s the term ‘don’t get mad, get even’ brought to life.  The worst thing about having your favorite team lose again is that emotion is all you have.  I am never ever going to be able to go try out for a pro football team so next time we can beat those rotten you-know-who’s.  All the intellect can say is ‘Hey, it’s just a game.  Life goes on’.

This morning, emotion was at war with intellect, and intellect finally had something to do beyond philosophizing.  ‘Hey, you know this time I CAN do something about it.  This time I can fight back.’  ‘Don’t get mad, get even’ became achievable. 

So I had the ‘get even’ part right, but it wasn’t till I was at the gym today that I realized if I were to engage my least favorite lib in an argument I would have sounded like Al Franken.  Not in terms of the arguments, but in terms of sounding, and maybe even being, bitter, unhappy and irritated.  I would sound like an angry liberal, except I’d be an angry conservative.  And if someone were just walking down the street and engaged me in conversation on the issues they would think I wasn’t much fun, because I was too irritated to have a sense of humor. 

I want to be seen as an optimistic, positive-thinking conservative with a sense of humor.  So I am going to enjoy this fight, and I’m going to laugh at the bums instead of letting them make me mad.

Don’t get mad, get even.  And have a great time doing it.