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Stimulus Fight Helps Bring Real Obama Into Focus

February is the cruelest month - at least for Barack Obama. After the very real sense of hope and renewal that surrounded Obama's inauguration, shared even by many who did not vote for him, came the morning after. First, another scandal over unpaid taxes took down Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle. Then came the acrimonious battle over the stimulus bill, with a victory that may or may not turn out to be a Pyrrhic one.

In some corners of the right where Obama Derangement Syndrome has been as fierce as the similar Bush-related malady on the left, these new developments have been viewed as justifying the worst of fears about Obama: a phony and a commie. In recent days, far-right websites have psychoanalyzed Obama's alleged hatred of America and free enterprise and suggested that he may be (I kid you not) a well-groomed Soviet plant. In fact, so far, Obama's policies are those of a mainstream liberal-to-centrist Democrat. He is no dangerous radical and no idealistic bringer of change. And, while he is a gifted and usually smooth communicator, he is neither a messiah who can lead us into a glorious future nor a pied piper who can lure us to perdition with seductive words.

Obama banked a great deal of his credibility on the stimulus package, and his appeals managed to improve public opinion of the legislation during the Congressional wrangling. Yet a Rasmussen poll of likely voters conducted on February 14-15 found that only 38% thought the bill would help the economy, and 29% thought it would hurt. Albeit by a small margin (35% to 32%), Americans said that they would be less, rather than more, likely to vote for a member of Congress who supported the bill.

Touted as a plan to create jobs and stimulate consumer spending by pumping more money into the economy, the initial bill turned out to be a cornucopia of pet Democratic causes with little relation to jobs or consumer spending. While some of the provisions, such as grants for contraception and for programs under the Violence Against Women Act (funds that do more for feminist activists than for actual victims), were later cut from the bill, other dubious items remained. Extra billions for Head Start, community-oriented policing, and "green" renovations at military bases and federal buildings may or may not be a good idea, but rushing them through Congress under the pretext of averting economic catastrophe smacks of political opportunism rather than true leadership.

It's hard to argue that this represents some unprecedented leap toward socialism, more so than Bush-era government expansion or the bank bailout. But, while Obama may not be a hater of free enterprise, his instinct is clearly to assume that government knows best. To him, the view that low taxes are a prime engine of economic growth is one of the "tired old theories" that have "led us into this mess." Of course, plenty of economists would question that analysis. But, like most people left and right, Obama assumes that the current crisis vindicates his own ideas and discredits opposing ones. (If you're a liberal, the crisis happened because the government didn't do enough to regulate markets; if you're an economic conservative, it happened because the government did too much.)

In his inaugural address, Obama declared that the question today "is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works." Interestingly, political commentator Jacob Weisberg, himself a liberal, has criticized this statement as an indication that Obama has no clear philosophy of what the proper functions and limits of government should be - and "whatever works" is a poor substitute. One might add whether a government program "works" is often hard to measure. Something that seems to "work" short -term may cause unintended consequences and unforeseen costs later, by creating a dependency on ever-expanding government services or by encouraging harmful social trends.

The grab-bag stimulus bill reflects this vague pseudo-pragmatism. Will it find public support? Not likely. In the wake of the economic crisis, some pundits have been proclaiming that, to quote the cover of Newsweek, "we are all socialists now." Apparently, not all, and perhaps not even most. According to Rasmussen polls, 48% of Americans say that more government spending is bad for the economy and only 35% believe it is good for the economy. Obama remains personally popular, getting particularly high marks on leadership quality and persuasiveness; but the substance may lag behind the image.

The silver lining of this month's troubles in Washington, DC is that Obamania seems to have passed. The stimulus bill has cooled pro-Obama conservatives and libertarians who hoped Obama would be a "market liberal." There is also growing discontent among Obama supporters on the left, unhappy with the sacrifice of "progressive" programs. Across the political spectrum, Obama has been assailed for everything from intransigence to panic-mongering excessive eagerness to compromise to lack of political maturity - and much of that criticism has come from people who supported him over John McCain, from liberal Paul Krugman to moderate conservative Kathleen Parker.

"Change we can believe in" is quickly turning out to be business as usual - the messy, day-to-day business of governing, debate, and compromise. It's not the end of our economic woes or our social discord. It is also not the end of the republic.

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Related Topics: barack obama | economy | obama stimulus package |

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