OBAMA HAS ANGERED THE CENTRE AND THE LEFT / THE FINANCIAL TIMES COMMENTARY & ANALYSIS ( HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

Obama has angered the centre and the left

By Clive Crook

Published: July 18 2010 19:39

Democrats in the US are worried about November’s mid-term elections, and they are right to be. On current numbers, Republicans will regain control of the House. The possibility that Democrats might also lose control of the Senate, in a year when the seats in play should rule this out, is taken seriously.

The economy is much to blame, of course. The political effects are direct and indirect. Voters are unhappy, which hurts the party in power. The electorate understands that George W. Bush bequeathed the recession, but if 18 months of remedial action have failed to work as hoped, blame begins to migrate.

This is the direct effect. The indirect effect, in a centre-right country that views big government sceptically, is that the faltering recovery calls the Democrats’ larger ambitions into question. Can the US really afford healthcare reform, voters wonder? Is this a good time to be raising taxes, for redistribution, as the Democrats intend next year?

However, the economy is not the only thing going wrong for Mr Obama and his party. The president’s political judgment is also at fault. I am not talking about the strategic goal of leaning against the country’s conservatism. Whether or not that makes sense, Mr Obama has slipped up tactically. Somehow, he has managed to infuriate both the left of his own party and, much more seriously for the Democrats’ prospects, the country’s political centre. This did not need to happen.

On the face of it, independent voters’ disenchantment with Mr Obama is harder to understand than the disappointment of the left. Healthcare reform, Mr Obama’s signature effort, was a moderate solution to a pressing problem. The assurance that existing arrangements would not change for those who were content – which is questionable, in fact, but let that pass – was aimed at moderate opinion. It ruled out more radical ideas such as extending Medicare health insurance, currently only for the elderly, to all Americans.

Mr Obama supported the “public option” – a government-run scheme to compete alongside private insurance plans – but did not insist on it. In the end, the bill that passed was anything but a socialist scheme. It was centrist through and through.

The fiscal stimulus, too, was a centrist initiative. It was smaller than the left wanted, and included temporary tax cuts as well as increases in spending. When you set healthcare and budget policy alongside the administration’s other policies – the delay on closing the Guantánamo prison, the commitment of extra forces to Afghanistan, the many Bush-like assertions of executive privilege – the left’s discontent is easy to understand. Why, then, are moderates and independents moving in such numbers to support Republicans?

Because Mr Obama, though wisely failing to insist on the left’s agenda, has chosen not to disown it. Unlike Bill Clinton, an instinctive centrist, Mr Obama is a progressive liberal. He wishes he could give the left what it wants. A disciplined and obstructive Republican opposition, fearful conservatives in his own party, and the mood of the country all make that, in his judgment, impossible. Mr Obama’s pragmatic temperament advises patience. Do what can be done, he calculates. Come back later for more.

This was half-right. If Mr Obama had followed the advice of the party’s progressive wing, he would have killed his administration’s electoral prospects – and his own hopes of a second term – stone dead. But he needed to go further. Once he understood that compromise was necessary he had to repudiate the left, not apologise to it.

He should have chosen centrism unreservedly – as many voters believed he had promised during his election campaign. Then he could have championed, as opposed to meekly accepting, centrist bills that maintained the role of private insurance in healthcare and a stimulus that included big tax cuts. Instead, he stepped back, put Congress in charge, and gave the appearance of having compromise forced upon him by Republicans and conservative Democrats.

Had he owned and campaigned for those centrist outcomes, the left would have been no angrier than it is anyway. The anger of the left, like the anger of the right, is always simply on or off: it cannot be modulated. But this fury could then have been co-opted as Mr Obama’s and the Democrats’ best asset going into November – proof to centrists and independents that the president was on their side.

A good rule of politics: if you are going to disappoint the left, make it your enemy. Mr Obama has got the worst of both worlds. He pleads for the left’s patience and understanding, certain to be rebuffed. The centre watches, also feeling betrayed, and waits for November.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.