As John Dickerson notes at Slate, there is real risk inherent to President Obama's strategy of stoking "outrage" over the AIG bonuses -- seeming too angry could hurt the administration's credibility when and if it needs to ask the American people to support another industry bailout. But there is more at stake. As Robert Reich wrote here yesterday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner likely knew weeks ago that AIG was planning big bonuses for its executives. Even more damning, TPM Muckraker reported last night that Chris Dodd is saying that Congress was pressed by unnamed Treasury Department "staff" to remove a key anti-bonus provision from the stimulus package. It's good to see that the president is, in a vague way, taking responsibility for the fracas. But it's beginning to look as if the administration's links to Wall Street -- in the person of Tim Geithner -- blinded it to this quite foreseeable PR disaster. --Dana Goldstein
