Obama - The Great Compromiser ?

Barack Obama campaigned in 2008 on a promise of delivering "change". Like many other leftists, I bought into that idea. It was exciting to think that after the dark years of President Bush a Democrat would turn the country around and give us the change that was badly needed.

But those of us who thought that wound up being very disappointed. From the very first weeks of his administration President Obama's favorite word has been "bipartisanship". I had wanted him to treat the Republicans as they had treated Democrats when they were in power and play a little political hardball, especially since the Democrats had substantial majorities in both houses of Congress.

I don't know if President Obama really believes in compromise and bipartisanship, or whether he knew all along that he just couldn't count on the "blue dogs" in the party to support real change. Either way, he charted a middle-of-the-road course. Even his best accomplishments have turned out to be a rather tepid brand of change. Both the health care law and the Wall Street re-regulation fell far short of what those on the left side of the political spectrum had hoped could be accomplished.

The re-regulation of Wall Street left much still to be done and allowed the financial giants to pretty much resume business as usual. And the health care reform that was passed was what many Republicans had themselves proposed in the past (and almost identical to what Republican Mitt Romney signed in Massachusetts). The right-wingers may have screamed about "socialized medicine" but the law was anything but that -- leaving the private insurance companies in charge of medical care for everyone but the elderly.

And while I am still very disappointed by what has been accomplished, I am starting to realize that maybe he has taken the right course. It has served him well in this new Congress where the Republicans control the House of Representatives. I had honestly thought they would shut the government down over the recent budget bill, but somehow the president charted a course to a compromise and got the Republicans to go along with it.

And he comes out looking better than anyone else from that showdown. Whether it's true or not, the perception is that the right-wing House and the liberal Senate had faced off in a political game of chicken, and the president convinced them to compromise. He comes out smelling like a rose.

Some pundits are saying that he has intentionally positioned himself as a middle-of-the-roader for the 2012 election. Maybe that's true, but I suspect he has always been in the middle (because he has never acted as a liberal in spite of the charges thrown at him by the right-wing). And maybe right now that is what is needed.

With the Republicans in charge of the House there is no chance of any liberal programs getting passed by the federal government. The best that can be hoped for (at least until after the 2012 election) is to stave off the Republican attempts to abolish the EPA and the Education Dept., abolish Medicare, destroy Social Security, take away women's right to control their own bodies, and cut social programs that help Americans that are hurting. I do believe the president will do that (even if he has to veto some right-wing bills).

He will do that because those are really middle-of-the-road positions. While the teabaggers and their right-wing corporate cohorts would like to see that Republican agenda accomplished, most Americans don't want that. They would like to see the deficit brought more under control, but they don't want it done on the backs of workers, children, the elderly or the poor.

I am not happy that the best we can hope for until the next election is to preserve the status quo, but that is true nonetheless. And a middle-of-the-road president may be just what is needed to do that.

Obama will never please the teabaggers. He could pass the whole Republican agenda and they would still hate him. That's just a fact (probably because he's African-American and too many of them are upset about that). But they are a minority and he doesn't need to worry about them. He has positioned himself well to appeal to Independents (and Democrats, even those very liberal ones, have to support him because the alternative is too terrible to consider -- Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Gingrich, Pawlenty, Bachmann, Trump, etc.). This will serve him well in the 2012 election.

And his favorability numbers show that. They are much higher than those of any possible Republican opponent. While I don't like it, it seems the country is in the mood for a middle-of-the-road compromiser right now -- and that fits President Obama to a T.

Maybe after his re-election in 2012 he can accomplish some things without compromise, but that would be against his nature (and would require huge Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate to push him further to the left).

Some of us voted in 2008 hoping we were electing another Franklin Roosevelt. What we got was another Bill Clinton. And we'll just have to settle for that right now -- at least until 2016.