It seems like a classic “do as I say, not as I do” scenario.

Last August, when Republican presidential nominee John McCain couldn’t answer a reporter when asked how many houses he owned (“I’m not sure, I’ll have to check with my staff” was McCain’s response), candidate Obama and his fellow Democrats were quick to seize the moment.

Portraying McCain‘s foible as evidence that his lifestyle was “out of touch“ with “everyday Americans,” Obama said before an audience in Virginia:

“….Now think about that….There’s just a fundamental gap of understanding between John McCain’s world, and what people are going through every single day here in America. You don’t have to be a Nobel Prize-laureate economist, you just have to have a little bit of a sense of what ordinary people are going through to understand that we can’t afford eight more years or four more years or one more year of the failed economic policies that George Bush has put in place.”

That was last August. Today, Barack Obama is our President. He has pledged to be the President that helps “everyday Americans.” And he has pledged that his administration will be the most “open” and “transparent” in the history of the U.S. Presidency.

And President Obama’s choice for a top cabinet position (to oversee the Department of the Treasury, no less), Timothy Geithner, has been discovered to have “forgotten” to pay $34,000 in personal taxes, and to have “mistakenly” employed a personal housekeeper in his home who had not filed the appropriate immigration paperwork.

Can you “relate” to Tim? Is this what it means to be “in touch” with “everyday Americans?” As Senator Jon Kyl said during the confirmation hearings last week, the notion that Geithner was unaware of his outstanding tax bill is “implausible.”

My point here is not to belittle or malign Timothy Geithner. He appears to be an extremely well educated, talented, and accomplished man. And for those of us who were unnerved by President Obama’s campaign of Kenyan-styled, redistributionist, “spread the wealth around” politics, a Geithner appointment at the Department of the Treasury (as well as the presence of some other members of Obama’s economic team) suggests that the new administration can attain at least some semblance of a rational monetary policy.

But here is what appears to be unfolding in the era of President Obama: America is rapidly devolving into a new age of elite governance, where “the rulers” operate on one playing field, and the rest of us - - “the ruled” - - operate on a separate, more lowly, more enslaved playing field. Continued...