Another factor was Obama’s aversion to confrontation and hot rhetoric, which resulted in largely milquetoast messaging about Wall Street. Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, who blamed the “money changers” for the Great Depression in his first inaugural address, Obama’s public utterances were muted. In a matter of weeks, critics argued that he had ceded the mantle of populism to his Tea Party opponents. “In an atmosphere primed for a populist backlash, he allowed the right wing to define the terms,” John Judis observed in the liberal New Republic magazine.
