BILL CLINTON, WHO WAS ACTUALLY GOOD AT THIS STUFF...:

The GOP Is Eating Obama's Lunch: Republicans stuck together and forced the president to sign the tax-cut extension. Eric Alterman on the stalled Democratic agenda and Obama’s worst flaw. (Eric Alterman, 12/17/10, Daily Beast)

Conservative Republicans beat down the liberal Democrats on Thursday night’s tax vote the same way they win everything: by sticking together and refusing to budge, even an inch… on anything. By caving early (and often), Obama managed to distance himself from this particular shellacking and even give some pundits the impression he had won something.

The New York Times’ Michael D. Shear looks at the passage of Thursday night’s tax deal as a sign that, potentially, President Obama might be “on the verge of one of his most productive months in office.” It’s a weird conclusion, (though to be fair, he poses it as a question). After all, as Brian Beutler observes in writing on the same topic, “Harry Reid's plan to get the federal government funded through the end of the fiscal year went up in flames, burning months and months of work by Senate appropriators and their staffs.”

For Obama, the center may be too far right (Washington Post, December 18, 2010)

Obama's approval ratings, however, have not risen as the tax fight has played out in Congress. Alex Castellanos, a GOP strategist, said Obama squandered an opportunity to boost his standing by the way he handled the deal.

"He is trying to run back to the middle but neutered the political value of the tax compromise when he attacked Republicans as 'hostage takers' and condemned the agreement as he embraced it," he said. "The president gets no credit for moving to the middle when he confesses he really didn't want to. Instead, he looks smaller and more political."

There is a natural tendency to suggest that Obama is following the course that President Bill Clinton pursued after his party lost Congress in 1994. Using the infamous strategy of triangulation, Clinton positioned himself between conservative Republicans in Congress and the liberals in his own party.

"Triangulation" is a loaded word these days, particularly among many Democrats. White House officials caution, however, that triangulation is not Obama's goal. Which is to say that the president's political North Star will not necessarily be some imagined space in the middle of the ideological spectrum.

"His attitude is, 'We've got goals to move this economy forward, strengthen the middle class, deal with our long-term competitive challenges, and we shouldn't be dogmatic about how we achieve them,' " White House senior adviser David Axelrod said.

"We should be willing to embrace ideas of either party if they advance the goal," he added.

...managed to regain ownership of Welfare Reform by vetoing the first couple attempts and then hailing an identical bill as a vast improvement that he could sign.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 19, 2010 8:58 AM