As it turns out, if you want a forward-looking newspaper, you can still turn to The New York Times.
Charles Blow proves it. So does David Leonhardt. Both of them are looking at Barack Obama with very clear eyes. And both of them, whether they realize it or not (I'm voting against not) explain why the last three years of Barack Obama's presidency are going to be the best ones of all.
Mr. Blow correctly identifies the President's decision to highlight immigration reform on his post-GOP-debacle agenda as an attempt to drive a political wedge between his political opponents and immigrant America. Mr. Leonhardt correctly identifies the President's decision to abandon the come-let-us-reason-together tone in his rhetoric as being fundamental to his political approach from this point onward. There is one simple reason behind Barack Obama' willingness to do this, and why this pivot is going to reap enormous dividends for him, his party and his county. Through five years of reaching out to the other side (and nearly getting both of his hands bitten off), combined with his recent resistance to Republican blackmail, the President has shown America that, like Kenny Rogers, he knows when to hold and when to fold.
And that quality, more than anything else, is the one aspect of character Americans of all political stripes rightly deem essential in a national leader.
When it comes to immigration, the President has already shown both flexibility and firmness, as have Democratic and Republican Senators, by supporting a comprehensive approach to immigration reform that balances human rights and national security, and that attracted the votes of more than two-thirds of the U.S. Senate. He is now in a position to ask the badly-gerrymandered House of Representatives to insist on one thing--a simple vote on this bipartisan bill. If they want to approve amendments, he is willing to consider them. If they want to reject it, and vote in favor of something else, he would be willing to take a look at that. But, having already folded on this issue to a degree, he is now in a position to hold. He can tell the GOP that it can no longer be the party of No. And he is guaranteed to win on this issue, no matter the response. Either way, the political outcome will be a fired-up Democratic base or a immigrant voter cohort hostile to Republicans. Either way, the President and his fellow Democrats have reason to smile.
None of this, however, obscures the harsh reality of the budget battle that lies ahead. And there, I am convinced that, after nearly three years of trying to fold for Republicans (and having Republicans turn him down every time), Barack Obama has only begun to hold. And, frankly, there are a number of ways by which he can do it.
For my part, I would hope that he goes back to the Progressive Caucus Budget proposal to use that as a starting point for negotiation, rather than his own earlier 2011 proposal. Both of them have merits, but the PCB proposal would help to ensure a finished product much closer to what the President's supporters want, as well as what the nation actually needs. And, if he needs empirical evidence to support a much stronger approach, he need only look at California, where it has been tried successfully.
Either way, I feel more confident about Barack Obama as a political card-player than I ever have. The rest of us should feel that way, too. And all of us should look forward to him being, in the last three years of his Presidency, anything but a lame duck.
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