Fred Hiatt: Obama, where are those ‘hard truths’ you promised?

During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly said he would tell Americans the hard truths — not what “you want to hear but . . . what you need to hear.”

On the most vexing challenge facing the country — how not to go bankrupt — he hasn’t lived up to the promise.

I’m not talking about Exhibit A in the Republican indictment, which is the rapid rise in the deficit over the past two years. Given the economy he inherited, Obama would have been derelict not to increase spending.

But when it comes to what has to be said and done for long-term fiscal responsibility, the president has chosen easier politics over harder truths.

(...)

There are meaningful philosophical divisions between the parties, and campaigns are important to draw distinctions and fight them out. But most Americans aren’t extreme left or right. They wouldn’t be satisfied with the services they would get from a government spending only 18 percent of GDP, as Pawlenty proposes, but they don’t want Obama’s 25 percent either.

Full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/easy-politics-over-hard-truths/2011/06/10/AGXEODSH_story.html

Quit posting such tripe.

what we want to hear is the doable change we actually voted for.