Politics & Power Quote by Steve Wynn

Wynn isn’t describing a policy dispute so much as staging a mood: fear as the master variable in the economy. The line is built like a confession that quickly becomes an accusation. He opens with a supposedly reluctant "those of us" - a carefully inclusive phrase that turns a billionaire casino magnate into a stand-in for a wider class of job-creators. Then he pivots to a grievance about social permission: people are afraid to criticize Obama, he claims, because dissent gets policed as disloyalty. That setup lets him cast himself as the one saying what others privately feel, a classic elite-populist move.

The subtext is less "I’m scared" than "my certainty has been interrupted". In 2011-2012, with the post-crash recovery sluggish and the Obama administration pushing regulation and health-care reform, business leaders who thrived on predictability framed uncertainty as existential threat. Wynn turns that uncertainty into moral culpability: "this is Obama's deal". Not Congress, not global finance, not the hangover from the housing bubble - one person. It’s rhetorically tidy and politically useful.

Notice the emotional inversion: the powerful are positioned as the vulnerable, "sitting in fear", while the president becomes the bully figure who caused it. The aim isn’t merely to criticize; it’s to legitimize capital’s hesitation as civic alarm. If investment stalls, the implication goes, blame the climate, not the boardroom. In a single breath, Wynn converts economic self-interest into a national psychological diagnosis - and names a villain to match.