AIG Furor Bleeds

The Washington Post is reporting that "President Obama's apparent inability to block executive bonuses at insurance giant AIG has dealt a sharp blow to his young administration and is threatening to derail both public and congressional support for his ambitious political agenda."
And it is true that "politicians in both parties flocked to express outrage over $165 million in bonuses paid out to executives at the company, demanding answers from the president and swamping yesterday's rollout of his efforts to spark lending to small businesses."
As The Post notes: "The populist anger at the executives who ran their firms into the ground is increasingly blowing back on Obama, whom aides yesterday described as having little recourse in the face of legal contracts that guaranteed those bonuses. "
Remember those words: little recourse in the face of legal contracts that guaranteed those bonuses.
For therein lies the rub.
There doesn't seem to be much that Obama can do except rant and rave.
More from The Post:
"White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, peppered with questions about why the president had not done more to block the bonuses at a company that has received $170 billion in taxpayer funds, struggled for an answer yesterday afternoon. He explained that government lawyers are 'looking through contracts to see what can be done to wrest these bonuses from their recipients.'"
Obama will try to make whatever political hay out of this he can. But the damage is ongoing. And it's contributing to a growing sense of doubt about the ability of those at the top to get on with the job.
And this, too:
House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said the bonus issue added to his belief that there will be almost no Republican support for any expansion of a bank-bailout program that passed Congress last fall with broad bipartisan support.
"What is the government's exit strategy from this sweeping involvement in private business?" he asked in a statement, adding that "taxpayers are not receiving an adequate accounting from either the Treasury or the management of the companies that received taxpayer funds. Unfortunately, we have not yet seen such a plan."