Those same left-of-center supporters last week were very disappointed with what they see as his excessive solicitude to big Wall Street interests in his financial deregulation proposal, while the financial institutions that contributed handsomely to his campaign see the proposed regulations as too burdensome and bad for a growing economy.
Obama responded to the Iranian regime's murderous suppression of its public with a defensible (although I strongly disagree with it) but Kissingerian realpolitik calculation. The purported logic of that position sits uneasily on the consciences of many of his liberal supporters -- who previously had heard the president's high moral and idealistic tone -- and many conservatives, as well.
It is an unnatural and probably un-useful political act when a liberal Democratic White House cites the approval of its historic foreign-policy bête noire -- in this case, Henry Kissinger -- as justification for the president's foreign-policy plays -- in this case, on Iran.
But at the crux of last week's political consternations was the hard-to-avoid implication that the president's domestic agenda -- particularly his signature health policy plans (which also have been the Democratic Party's signature domestic issue) -- was running headlong into both economically and politically intolerable deficits and national debt accumulation.
The Congressional Budget Office's preliminary cost and deficit calculations of the president's overall budget and specific health proposals have sent tremors through the Democratic Party establishment, and the White House is feeling the vibrations.
Not counting the estimated $1.6 trillion 10-year cost for part of the president's proposed health policy changes, the CBO predicts that the administration's budget proposal would increase the national debt by $9.3 trillion over 10 years -- almost twice the total national debt from George Washington to George W. Bush. Even the president's own Office of Management and Budget director, Peter Orszag, has stated that a continued deficit that is more than 3.5 percent of gross domestic product is "unsustainable." The president's budget is more than 4 percent of GDP.
Moreover, to advance the president's climate change legislation (the third of his big three legislative initiatives), Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has had to cut way back on its early-years revenue-raising provisions in order to induce more support among Democratic congressmen -- thus further increasing future deficits beyond even the current budget proposal.
Though the president remains broadly admired, with his personal-approval polling numbers at about 60 percent, his policy proposals are becoming less popular with the public as they are emerging in more detail. And as even those policies that are popular appear to be unaffordable, the president's Democratic senatorial allies are focusing more on their responsibilities as senators and less on their party loyalties to a Democratic president.
Although the president is looking somewhat inconsistent and less effective while his policies are looking less plausible, it's early, and legislative success may yet be the president's this season. But it is not too early for Democratic Party nerves and their ending of the presidential honeymoon.
Tony Blankley
Tony Blankley, a conservative author and commentator who served as press secretary to Newt Gingrich during the 1990s, when Republicans took control of Congress, died Sunday January 8, 2012. He was 63.
Blankley, who had been suffering from stomach cancer, died Saturday night at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, his wife, Lynda Davis, said Sunday.
In his long career as a political operative and pundit, his most visible role was as a spokesman for and adviser to Gingrich from 1990 to 1997. Gingrich became House Speaker when Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives following the 1994 midterm elections.
©Creators Syndicate