Obama: A Dose of Reality
Jules Witcover

Is it possible that President Obama has finally recognized who his friends and enemies are? After nearly three years of futile attempts to do business with the congressional Republicans set on doing him in, he has now decided to duke it out with them over sharing the nation's tax burden.

By calling for $1.5 trillion in new taxes through reforms that target America's wealthiest, he is taking one more stab at arguing that sheltering the rich comes at the expense of the foundering middle class. It's an argument that he used without success in the 2010 congressional elections and the debt-limit fiasco that followed, conspicuously surrendering to House Speaker John Boehner and raising further allegations of weak leadership from both parties.

The president's decision to fight harder this time around for tax equity may stem Democratic laments about him. But, predictably, it has intensified the cries of class warfare from the Republicans through crocodile tears, a lament heard ever since the Bush years, as the truly rich have gotten richer.

In announcing his tax plan, Obama trotted out his old argument with greater intensity and a veto threat attached. "I reject the idea that asking a hedge-fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or teacher is class warfare," he said. "Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes or we're going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare."

It's also a choice, he said, between gutting education and medical research or reforming the tax code "so the most profitable corporations have to give up tax loopholes that other companies don't get. We can't afford to do both. This is not class warfare. It's math."

Why does the White House believe the argument that failed to win over the country earlier will work now? In the Bush years, the Republicans managed to convince many middle-class voters that their dreams of getting rich themselves some day warranted rejection of class-warfare arguments.

But in the current harsh economic times, the administration apparently hopes the same middle-class voters are experiencing a wake-up call of self-interest that will make them much more receptive to the Obama pitch for greater tax equity, and thus muffle the class-warfare pitch.

An anomaly in current public-opinion polling finds the president's favorability ratings dropping while support for his positions on this and other responses to the economic crisis remains high. The latest Gallup/USA Today poll found 70 percent of voters surveyed favored increasing taxes on the rich by eliminating tax loopholes. And 66 percent agreed that the Bush tax cuts for individuals making $200,000 or more a year and families earning $250,000 or more should be eliminated.

An old political axiom has held that people always "vote their pocketbooks," casting their ballots on the basis of their self-interest. But it's a tribute to the talent of political spinmeisters that they can often convince voters to see their self-interest through distorted lenses. How else to explain the poor and middle class supporting special tax cuts for the rich?

At any rate, Obama's decision to go all-in -- for now, anyway -- on the tax equity argument seems his best chance to win the public-opinion battle, along with abandonment of his failed Mr. Nice Guy courtship of Boehner. The president's earlier quest of bipartisanship and compromise in their past encounters made him appear a pushover.

The Republican congressional leaders charge that Obama's proposal is not only class warfare but also "a re-election bill." That clearly is so, especially given the absence of any Social Security reform such as raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67. But Obama has made clear for once which side he's on, as he seeks to resurrect and maintain the traditional Democratic constituency he needs to achieve a second term next year.

The Republican presidential frontrunner, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, meanwhile has handed his opponents a stick with which to poke him by characterizing Social Security as "a Ponzi scheme" better handled by the states. Obama would be foolhardy not to cast himself in response as the protector-in-chief of the senior citizen's most cherished federal benefit.