AND THE OPPOSITE OF HONESTY IS?:

Could Obama decide a deficit deal is in his interest? (Fred Hiatt, February 20, 2011, Washington Post)

Mocked for the timidity of his proposed 2012 budget, President Obama appeared before reporters last week to insist that he is open to serious deficit reduction beyond what's laid out in his plan. People in Washington are so impatient, he complained. Why would anyone think that his 2,403-page fiscal prescription, released the day before, was his last word on the subject?

The co-chairmen of his fiscal commission, whose bipartisan success Obama had ignored in his proposal, welcomed the rhetorical opening. "Sadly, the president does punt on the larger issues," they wrote in a Sunday op-ed for The Post.

"And yet, he's right: A bipartisan process is where this must start," Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson added. "The real test is whether he follows through on these good intentions."

What are the odds of that? If Obama were serious about Social Security reform but believed that going first with a proposal would hurt its chances, he presumably would be laying the groundwork by speaking honestly about the challenge.

Instead, so far, we have the opposite.

Of course, the GOP's supposed deficit hawk, Paul Ryan, was so timid he voted against the commission plan.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 22, 2011 7:33 AM