"these days the Obama team seems far more preoccupied with deficit reduction than job creation"

[Better Believe It]

Obama: Triangulation 2.0?
By Ari Berman
January 20, 2011

After his party's midterm rebuke in 1994, Clinton delivered a prime-time address in December of that year to pre-empt incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" by unveiling a "Middle Class Bill of Rights" consisting mainly of tax cuts. Congressional Democrats were furious at the proposal, and noted liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote that Clinton had "hoisted a white flag—and did so before a crowd that won't be satisfied by anything short of unconditional surrender." Sixteen years later, following his own midterm thumping and in an attempt to preserve the sort of tax cuts liberal Democrats once vilified Clinton for, Obama agreed to extend all of the Bush tax cuts temporarily, including those for the wealthiest Americans. The deal demonstrated how far the pendulum had swung to the right, especially in the wake of George W. Bush's tenure, and raised alarming questions about how Obama planned to govern against the backdrop of a divided Washington. If Obama continues to adopt Republican ideas, what was previously regarded as the center will shift even further to the right.

Obama said he wanted to be like Reagan, not Clinton, but he has yet to make a sustained case for his corresponding ideology or vision for the country, as Reagan successfully did. Reagan attacked liberalism throughout his presidency—big government was the problem, and lower taxes and fewer regulations were the solution. No matter the deals he eventually struck, whether it be with Tip O'Neill or Soviet Russia, capitalism was the hero and government the villain. Reaganism became an ideology, and the GOP is still following that script today. One can scarcely say the same about Obamaism—whatever that may be. "Just where Mr. Obama actually lives on the ideological continuum," wrote Matt Bai of the New York Times, "is the most vexing question of his presidency." Obama has been quite clear about his allergy to ideological thinking. "I don't think in ideological terms," he told The Nation in 2005. "I never have." But the president's relentless attachment to "pragmatism," which has become an ideology unto itself, has allowed the GOP's dominant narrative about the economic crisis—that big government, once again, is to blame—to go unchallenged, especially when Obama sides with Republicans thematically on issues like deficit reduction and freezes on discretionary spending and federal pay. "In the absence of an alternative narrative the Republican story is the only one the public hears," Robert Reich, Clinton's labor secretary and a onetime Obama economic adviser, noted on his blog. Hence the rise of the Tea Party and the potency of antigovernment right-wing populism nowadays.

"The narrative is obvious," says Stan Greenberg. "We have an economic philosophy centered on making the middle class richer, and they have an economic philosophy which says trickle-down." Making that story stick would require both a rhetorical and policy shift from the Obama administration—sharpening the populist language and outlining ambitious proposals to turn the economy around. Yet there's little evidence that Obama's team is prepared to adopt such an approach, especially given that his core advisers are former Wall Street insiders or policy-makers sympathetic to them. Obama's aversion to populism has turned him into what Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne calls a "Wall Street Liberal"—a big-spending friend of the banks.

.... these days the Obama team seems far more preoccupied with deficit reduction than job creation. "What I want to hear is jobs," Begala says of the upcoming State of the Union address. "What I predict is the deficit." Indeed, the administration just hired Bruce Reed, former head of the DLC and executive director of the president's deficit commission, as Vice President Joe Biden's new chief of staff. The president has been boxed in by the GOP: unable to raise taxes or spend money. Under the GOP's formula, budget cuts are his only option. Austerity politics rules the day. As a result, Hickey and other progressive organizers are looking outside the White House for leadership on the economy. "We need the highest-level group in Congress to say to the White House, We need a jobs plan," Hickey says. The Local Jobs for America Act, introduced last year by Representative George Miller and Senator Sherrod Brown, could be the basis for those discussions.

Read the full article at:

http://www.thenation.com/article/157902/obama-triangulation-20?page=0,0

[liberal N proud]

1. And this was said about the GOP:

From NBC's Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Ali Weinberg
*** The House GOP’s first impression: As President Obama discusses the economy today and taps GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to lead a new White House board (more on that below), the GOP-led House has spent its first two weeks in power focusing on other issues. On Wednesday, it voted to repeal the president’s signature health-care law. On Thursday, it introduced legislation permanently barring taxpayer subsidies for abortion. And today comes the headline that House conservatives want an immediate cut of $100 billion in discretionary spending, a higher amount that GOP leaders have called for, as well as federal outlays to be reduced by $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years. So after spending months talking about how the Obama administration wasn’t talking about jobs, House Republicans are, well, not talking directly about jobs. First impressions are everything in politics. And the House GOP’s first impression has not been jobs.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/01/21/5891465-first-thoughts-the-house-gops-first-impression