WHY WOULD HE EMULATE SUCH SUCCESSFUL PRESIDENCIES?:

Left decries move towards centre ground (Edward Luce, May 19 2009, Financial Times)

[W]here some see the new US president making an abrupt change from the policies of George W. Bush, a growing band of liberal critics see continuity. Among their ranks, there is a new moniker for Mr Obama’s administration: “Bush 2.0”.

Groups such as Moveon.org, the anti-war movement that is at the core of the liberal “netroots”, compare Mr Obama’s policies in the “war on terror” with those of Mr Bush. These include the president’s decision last week to revive the military tribunals to try alleged terrorists, which he had condemned on the campaign trail. [...]

Some critics see continuity in Mr Obama’s approach to the financial crisis. More specifically, they see a Paulson-Geithner approach (after Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, the successive Treasury secretaries) which, they say, is scripted by Wall Street.

On the broader economic front, critics say Mr Obama is reviving “Clintonomics” without the budget surpluses. [...]

Mr Obama’s real test, however, is likely to be over the contents of his healthcare plan, which will be made clear in the next few weeks. Some are nervous that he will jettison his promise of including a government-run insurance plan in the bill, which the White House is hoping will pass the House of Representatives by the end of July.

A number of centrist Democrats in the Senate, including Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh and Max Baucus, have echoed the complaints of health insurance companies, which say that a competing public plan would eventually drive them out of business. But supporters of the public plan, which is rapidly becoming the ultimate measure among liberals of Mr Obama’s reformist credentials, say that without it the insurance companies would quickly revert to their tried and tested ways of making money – outsmarting the regulators to exclude the sick and those with “pre-existing” medical conditions.

“If President Obama shows courage and sticks to the public plan against the opposition of the insurance companies then these other liberal complaints, which are mostly about dealing with the Bush legacy, will be forgotten,” says Jim Morone, a political scientist at Brown University in Rhode Island. “If he ducks on this once-in-a-generation moment to overhaul US healthcare, then liberal disenchantment will harden.”

Bill and W got re-elected--of course he's aping them.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 20, 2009 7:55 AM