By agreeing to this monstrosity of Stimuls II, the Republicans (aka The Stupid Party, aka The Bourbons) have pretty much pulled defeat from the jaws of victory and immeasurably aided Obama’s reelection chances. Like the Bourbon dynasty of France, they learn nothing and forget everything. With the media firmly in his pocket as well as the popular culture – Obama just now needs to make meaningless gestures of bipartisanship and with even a slight upturn in good economic news (which will be overhyped by a compliant media) in order to lock up 2012. Don’t wait around for Obama’s base to desert him – as Dr. K. notes – they have no where else to go.
by Charles Krauthammer
If Barack Obama wins reelection in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on Dec. 6, the day of the Great Tax Cut Deal of 2010.
Obama had a bad November. Self-confessedly shellacked in the midterm election, he fled the scene to Asia and various unsuccessful meetings, only to return to a sad-sack lame-duck Congress with ghostly dozens of defeated Democrats wandering the halls.
Now, with his stunning tax deal, Obama is back. Holding no high cards, he nonetheless managed to resurface suddenly not just as a player but as orchestrator, dealmaker and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama.
Compare this with Bill Clinton, greatest of all comeback kids, who, at a news conference a full five months after his shellacking in 1994, was reduced to plaintively protesting that “the president is relevant here.” He had been so humiliatingly sidelined that he did not really recover until late 1995 when he outmaneuvered Newt Gingrich in the government-shutdown showdown.
And that was Clinton responding nimbly to political opportunity. Obama fashioned out of thin air his return to relevance, an even more impressive achievement.
Remember the question after Election Day: Can Obama move to the center to win back the independents who had abandoned the party in November? And if so, how long would it take? Answer: Five weeks. An indoor record, although an asterisk should denote that he had help – Republicans clearing his path and sprinkling it with rose petals.
Obama’s repositioning to the center was first symbolized by his joint appearance with Clinton, the quintessential centrist Democrat, and followed days later by the overwhelming 81 to 19 Senate majority that supported the tax deal. That bipartisan margin will go a long way toward erasing the partisan stigma of Obama’s first two years, marked by Stimulus I, which passed without a single House Republican, and a health-care bill that garnered no congressional Republicans at all.
Despite this, some on the right are gloating that Obama had been maneuvered into forfeiting his liberal base. Nonsense. He will never lose his base. Where do they go? Liberals will never have a president as ideologically kindred – and they know it. For the left, Obama is as good as it gets in a country that is barely 20 percent liberal.
The conservative gloaters were simply fooled again by the flapping and squawking that liberals ritually engage in before folding at Obama’s feet. House liberals did it with Obamacare; they did it with the tax deal. Their boisterous protests are reminiscent of the floor demonstrations we used to see at party conventions when the losing candidate’s partisans would dance and shout in the aisles for a while before settling down to eventually nominate the other guy by acclamation.
And Obama pulled this off at his lowest political ebb. After the shambles of the election and with no bargaining power – the Republicans could have gotten everything they wanted on the Bush tax cuts retroactively in January without fear of an Obama veto – he walks away with what even Paul Ryan admits was $313 billion in superfluous spending.
[…]
The greatest mistake Ronald Reagan’s opponents ever made – and they made it over and over again – was to underestimate him. Same with Obama. The difference is that Reagan was so deeply self-assured that he invited underestimation – low expectations are a priceless political asset – whereas Obama’s vanity makes him always needing to appear the smartest guy in the room. Hence that display of prickliness in his disastrous post-deal news conference last week.
But don’t be fooled by defensive style or thin-skinned temperament. The president is a very smart man. How smart? His comeback is already a year ahead of Clinton’s.
Read the rest here: The new comeback kid
UPDATE – As you all know by now, the bill was stifled last night. Here is a good response to Dr. K. I agree, if unemployment hovers near 10%, Obama will be dead in the water.
by Jacob Heibrunn
Judging by this column, Charles Krauthammer is terrified of President Obama. Where some see a president who has capitulated to his ideological foes, Krauthammer, by contrast, detects a nefarious Obama whose cunning has set a trap for the GOP on tax and spending policy. Obama, thanks to the foolishness of the congressional GOP, which appeased him, is on the rebound. All the GOP did is ratify a new round of stimulus spending:
[…]
So says Krauthammer, at any rate. But is it true? Has Obama pulled a fast one on the GOP? Or did he betray his own principles?
[…]
Republicans were desperate to retain the Bush tax cuts in toto. In return they extended unemployment insurance for another twelve months and agreed to a payroll tax cut. But to argue that Obama somehow outmanuevered the Republicans is implausible.
Krauthammer focuses on the politics, arguing that Obama’s base has nowhere else to go. But it could. It could, in fact, go nowhere. On election day. That alone could jeopardize Obama’s reelection chances. The real question is whether Obama is going to morph into the slayer of old-time liberalism.
He was elected on the expectation that he would revive the Democratic party. But what if he does it by completing the Clinton revolution? It’s worth asking what will be left of liberalism after one, or especially two, terms of Obama. Obama is talking about using the tax cut program deal as a template for reaching other compromises with the GOP on issues such as reforming Social Security. Now that the midterm election has wiped out many House members, Obama is free to tack to the center.
Ultimately, the president remains the central actor. If there’s a foreign policy crisis, he’s the big man. If Obama wants to reshape the federal government, he can float a proposal that will appeal to Republicans. Obama’s mistake during the health care debate was to rely on congressional Democrats to come up with a program. He forgot the old line that the president proposes and Congress disposes. It looks as though Obama may be going into proposing mode.
But whether this really turns him into the cunning chameleon that Krauthammer purports to see is another question. The blunt fact is that Obama can do all the trimming he wants, but if unemployment remains at 10 percent he’s most likely a one-term president.
Read the rest – Why is Charles Krauthammer afraid of Obama?
