My Mood Starts to Shift in Baby Steps

I was really discouraged a month or so ago, by Obama's repeated caving to an intransigent GOP.  His recent pivot to "pass this bill!" populism has me a little more hopeful, though. While I have pretty much accepted that the guy just isn't that liberal- that was wishful thinking- I'm hoping that he might actually fight for something- anything.

But his attempts to come to the center and be the adult in the room have been remarkably ineffective. I think he's calculated at long last that compromise is completely impossible with these guys and he has to draw contrasts. I'd have liked to see it happen a long time ago, but BHO believed his own rhetoric about bringing people together and changing the culture. Better late than never.

The economy is going to be terrible next November, which is very bad for incumbent presidents. The only chance he has is to draw the contrasts and try to blame it on the Republicans.

What continues to bum me out, though, is that Obama is obsessed with staking out this "middle ground"- deficit reduction, tax cuts as stimulus more than government spending, etc- which liberal economists say is just way too weak to make much difference in the economy. So I'm left arguing not that Obama's plans are great, but that they're the bare minimum. "But the Republicans would be even worse!" Not much of a slogan.

And then on top of that, he doesn't get any credit for being in the center. David Brooks in the NYT this week hammered Obama for giving up on centrism!

Yes, I’m a sap. I believed Obama when he said he wanted to move beyond the stale ideological debates that have paralyzed this country. I always believe that Obama is on the verge of breaking out of the conventional categories and embracing one of the many bipartisan reform packages that are floating around. But remember, I’m a sap. The White House has clearly decided that in a town of intransigent Republicans and mean ideologues, it has to be mean and intransigent too. The president was stung by the liberal charge that he was outmaneuvered during the debt-ceiling fight. So the White House has moved away from the Reasonable Man approach or the centrist Clinton approach.
It has gone back, as an appreciative Ezra Klein of The Washington Post conceded, to politics as usual. The president is sounding like the Al Gore for President campaign, but without the earth tones. Tax increases for the rich! Protect entitlements! People versus the powerful! I was hoping the president would give a cynical nation something unconventional, but, as you know, I’m a sap.

He's so committed to his narrative ("the two sides need to come together in the middle and we'll be united and solve all our problems") that he's blind to the reality, which is that Republicans won't come to the center no matter what. [I love this Jonathan Cohn takedown of the Brooks piece]  There's no hope for David Brooks I guess.  He really is a sap.