WP: Mr. Cool's Centrist Gamble
By David Ignatius
Sunday, January 11, 2009; Page B07
....(A)s the inauguration approaches, Obama is doing something quite remarkable: Rather than settling into the normal partisan governing stance, he is breaking with it -- moving toward the center in a way that upsets some of his liberal allies but offers the promise of broad national support....Since Election Day, he has taken a series of steps to co-opt his opponents and fashion a new governing majority. It's an admirable strategy but also a high-risk one, since the "center," however attractive it may be in principle, is often a nebulous political never-never land.
Obama's bet is that at a time of national economic crisis, the country truly wants unity....But it remains an open question whether the Republicans will do more than applaud politely when Obama asks for help.
Obama's first move to galvanize this new center was his appointment of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff. The Illinois congressman cut his teeth in Bill Clinton's White House, campaigning for welfare reform and other "New Democrat" issues. As a member of the House leadership, he often worried that liberal Democrats might drive the party off a cliff. His job now, it appears, is partly to make sure the White House sets the policy agenda, rather than the party's base.
Obama continued this political reformation in recruiting his Cabinet, which is so centrist it almost resembles a government of national unity....
Obama has tried to reach across traditional red-blue divisions in ways that have genuinely upset some of his supporters. The most striking example was the choice of Rick Warren, a pastor who opposes same-sex marriage, to deliver the inaugural invocation. Gay rights activists who worked hard for Obama's election could reasonably ask: Hey! What about us?
Obama's yen for the middle has been clear as he crafted his economic stimulus package -- especially in his decision to include $300 billion in tax cuts to woo GOP support....
But political breadth may come at the cost of policy coherence. Are tax breaks really the best way to maintain aggregate demand in an economy that is slowing so sharply? Will frightened businesses and households actually spend the money the government puts in their hands, or will they save it? Won't infrastructure spending and other public investments have a greater stimulative effect than the politically attractive tax cuts? By throwing the GOP a tax-cut bone, Obama is signaling that getting the stimulus package passed quickly, with bipartisan support, is more important than the details....
As the days tick down toward inauguration, Obama remains Mr. Cool. His advisers say he makes decisions more confidently than anyone they've ever watched in politics. He's fashioning a new style of governing, as if by instinct. He's rebuilding a center that many analysts thought was impossible. He's heading into the loneliest, most difficult terrain on earth, and he's still making it look easy. But it won't be.
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