Broder: Obama 'Gambles' By Attempting To Address Country's Concerns

America's leading advocate of hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit, David Broder, is back with a peach of an op-ed today. Let me lay it on out for you: America is facing numerous crises, the people have elected a President to solve them. That President, Barack Obama, now stands at a fork in the road. What path will he choose? Will he make an attempt to address the substantive concerns of his constituents, and live or die electorally, by the results of his efforts? Or will he seek out the safe realm of political half-stepping? Broder seems surprised by the way Obama seems to be leaning:

What came through in his speech to a joint session of Congress and a national television audience Tuesday night was a dramatic reminder of the unbelievable stakes he has placed on the table in his first month in office, putting at risk the future well-being of the country and the Democratic Party's control of Washington.

It was also, and even more significantly, a measure of the degree to which he has taken personal responsibility for delivering on one of the most ambitious agendas any newly inaugurated president has ever announced.

Most politicians, facing an economic crisis as deep as this one -- the threatened collapse of the job market and manufacturing, retail and credit systems, along with the staggering, unprecedented costs of the attempted rescue efforts -- would happily postpone tackling anything else.

But not Obama.

Instead, no sooner had he finished describing his plans for spurring an economic recovery and shoring up the crippled automotive and banking industries than he was off to the races, outlining his ambitions for overhauling energy, health care and education policy.

All of this, naturally, represents a sort of "gamble" to Broder, who, taking in the ranks of "veteran legislators" who had previously been thwarted at the "difficulty" of doing things that are, uhm...well, "difficult," I guess...opted to do the sensible thing: namely, ensure the safety of their own seats, guarantee that descriptor - "veteran" - remains, and basically bask in the safe bets of being Savvy. The House (or the Senate) always wins, right?

Basically, to Broder, what Obama is professing to do - a mixture of policy initiatives, solution forging, and priority setting that I'll loosely bundle together under the catch-all title, "Stuff That The People Who Elected Obama Wanted Him To Do In Exchange For Electing Him" - is a terrible gamble. A "roll of the dice" (where have I heard that before?) Shore up the economy AND attempt a bold new health care reform? Surely that's too much for any one man to attempt! And sure those two things cannot possibly have any sort of inter-relation!

But, if Broder has the pulse of America correct, now might be the time to take a chance!

But Obama was not content to leave it at that. Buoyed for now by last year's victories over Hillary Clinton and John McCain, by his soaring approval rating and by a Republican opposition whose incoherence was demonstrated by the reply from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Obama is clearly of a mind to strike while the iron is hot.

His mind-set is somewhat reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's in 1981, when he recognized that the Democrats' self-confidence had been shattered by his victory and that the door was therefore open for him to enact more of the conservative agenda than any Republican in 50 years.

Reagan could do that in part because he was unchallenged on the Republican side of the aisle and he had the only program that counted.

In other words, the time is right to act on these bold plans because the opposition Obama faces is weak! A good thing, too! I mean, what could Obama have done if the time to act merely seemed right, because of empirical urgent needs and the demands of constituents? This is like saying that the time is right for firefighters to do their jobs because the approval rating of arsonists has finally dipped below a certain threshold.

We saw this pure Broderian savvy at work in the wrangling over the stimulus bill. The package promises $40 billion in state aid? Wowsers! That's a lot! But the safe bet says we could get six more votes if we only gave out $20 billion! So rather than gamble that the country would be better off at $40 billion, let's do the safe, savvy thing, and call it a day.

Now, to be specific, after a month into his presidency, it cannot be fairly stated that Obama has, on every occasion, set off down the path of pure empirical responsiveness to the needs of the electorate. He's veered in the Broder direction on numerous occasions. But when I hear Obama say things like, "Judge me on the number of jobs I create," I don't think, "Oh no, he's taking an awful chance there!" Rather, I remark that this is probably the way presidents are supposed to behave - set a clear mark and stand in judgment if he fails to hit it. It's when Obama makes blanket statements like "We do not practice torture," while simultaneously upholding pernicious practices such as the state secrets act that I get queasy. By Beltway standards, it's the savvy decision, but that's when I start to wish Obama wasn't playing with house money.