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Co-Director of the Campaign for America’s Future
Huffington Post
Posted: September 2, 2009 10:46 AM
As Congress returns from its summer recess, President Obama, slipping in the polls, assailed on all sides by the carpers, faces a strategic choice: Lead the charge, rally Democrats, and push forward on his agenda, starting with health care reform or trim his sails and adopt a more cautious course.
David Brooks, the keeper of conservative convention, sounds the call for retreat in his New York Times column. Brooks, who peddles conservative pieties with a soft voice and smile, has packaged himself as the "reasonable" Republican. This has made him the darling of mainstream opinion, a pundit far more prominent than profound. But he is consistent: when he begins ladling out advice to Democrats, he is unerringly in error.
Brooks argues that Obama has gone astray because he joined himself "at the hip to the liberal leadership in Congress." His slide in opinion polls comes from promoting policies that "increase spending and centralize power in Washington." Obama must learn that "fiscal responsibility" is the "animating issue of American moderates." So Obama would be well advised to return to the central values of America: "fiscal restraint, individual choice and decentralized authority."
Well. Few would object to those desirables, but before Brooks' advice congeals into conventional wisdom, it is worth noting that it is truly bunk.Yes, Obama has suffered a slide in the polls since the afterglow of his election. Much of this was to be expected once he started trying to clean up the devastation left by George Bush. Become president as Americans lose some $13 trillion in assets and see how long your popularity holds up, no matter what course you follow.
But in these ruins, it is hardly "fiscal responsibility" that is the "animating issue" of American politics. Continue reading here.
