Like Paul Waldman, I noticed that David Brooks is disappointed in Obama's inability to change the "stale, old debate":One of the odd features of the Democratic Party is its inability to learn what politics is about. It’s not about winning arguments. It’s about deciding which arguments you are going to have. In the first year of the Obama administration, the Democrats, either wittingly or unwittingly, decided to put the big government-versus-small government debate at the center of American life.
This really gets it wrong. Most of the ardent fans of an activist government will tell you Obama has not gone far enough in answering today's challenges and claiming the mantle of big-government liberalism, and they should know. The debate that Obama administration is having, and wants to have, is a simple one: How do we meet the challenges in front of us?
The recession could only be answered with Keynesian fiscal policy; few in the mainstream disputed that at the time or dispute it now. Our health-care system called out for drastic action, and rather than choosing the single-payer system of maximum government control, the president opted for a public-private hybrid in a uniquely American tradition. Financial reform comes to the fore and the president offers technocratic fixes that disappoint the advocates for a totally reformed banking sector. Abroad, he is as much a realist as he is a progressive. Obama leans to the left, but he's more of pragmatist and a synthesizer than an ideologue, much to the ire of the progressive movement itself.
It's a shame that Brooks can't recognize this. It is he, rather than Obama or even the Democrats at large, who has fallen lazily back into the boring old debate about the size of government, refusing to look for a new discussion about a smarter, more sustainable government. You write what you know, I suppose.
-- Tim Fernholz
