HE KNOWS WHEN TO FOLD 'EM, WHEN TO WALK AWAY AND WHEN TO RUN....:

Despite Major Plans, Obama Taking Softer Stands (DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and JACKIE CALMES, 4/19/09, NY Times)

President Obama is well known for bold proposals that have raised expectations, but his young administration has shown a tendency for compromise and caution, and even a willingness to capitulate on some of his early initiatives. [...]

“The thing we still don’t know about him is what he is willing to fight for,” said Leonard Burman, an economist at the Urban Institute and a former Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration. “The thing I worry about is that he likes giving good speeches, he likes the adulation and he likes to make people happy.”

But so far, he said, “It’s hard to think of a place where he’s taken a really hard position.”

...but that seems to be about it. And because everyone realizes this it renders him powerless.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 18, 2009 5:52 PM