By Dylan Matthews
Rarely have I been as happy with a column I so thoroughly disagree with as I am with Ruth Marcus' piece today. Her central thesis - that Obama is somehow governing with a "moderate tilt" and not as an "unreconstructed liberal" - is pretty absurd on its face. We're barely two months into the new administration, and already a withdrawal from Iraq has been announced, an $800 billion stimulus package has been passed, S-CHIP has been expanded, stem cell restrictions have been lifted, and Guantanamo has been shut down. Say what you will about that, but it's a pretty solidly liberal policy agenda.
But by God, I hope writers like Marcus use their soapboxes to present it as centrist. They win, obviously; they, as paragons of the centrist DC establishment, are able to link themselves with a very popular president. Obama benefits as well, being able to credibly claim that he's forging a middle ground. But in the end, this sort of framing is good for progressivism. If a president whose first budget includes universal health care, a cap & trade system, and a massive increase in federal education spending qualifies as "moderate", then it's safe to say that the national political center is shifting strongly to the left, which can only be a good thing. Who knows, if this line of argument keeps up we might actually be able to have a robust debate as liberal about what kind of social democracy we want America to be, rather than defending the notion of social democracy itself.
