And so the disappointment begins.
President Barack Obama appears ready to put a budget plan on the table that offers more of the same — which is to say he is willing to damage some of the nation’s most successful and important programs in order to save them.
President Obama will release a budget next week that proposes significant cuts to Medicare and Social Security and fewer tax hikes than in the past, a conciliatory approach that he hopes will convince Republicans to sign onto a grand bargain that would curb government borrowing and replace deep spending cuts that took effect March 1.
The argument here is that the budget will make the president seem reasonable, that he is the man navigating the debates between two extremes — essentially, the adult in a room full of kids.
The problem is his analysis of the problem. He is not navigating among extremes. There is one extreme (the GOP plan to slash and burn government and protect the rich) and a reasonable direction forward. The left is not offering an extreme plan. The House Progressive budget, for instance, moves toward balance in the future without castrating progressive principles or gutting important programs.
But this is what Obama has done since taking office. The problem I’ve had with the president since his initial candidacy — since the publication of his book The Audacity of Hope — is that his primary philosophical sensibility has nothing to do with political principle. He is not the leftist the crazed folks on the right paint him to be. He’s not even what I would call an ideological centrist. That would imply a sense of ideology. He is and always has been a man committed conciliation and compromise at all costs. That puts him at a disadvantage when dealing with the right’s extremism.
The result, in practical terms, has been a willingness to compromise before the negotiations even begin (see healthcare) and a more dangerous tendency to sacrifice the things his base believe in. It is compromise for the sake of compromise.
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Hank Kalet 