by Kenneth T. Walsh

President Obama hasn't turned out to be a liberal zealot

Sometimes an event comes along that provides special insight into a president's values, his leadership, and his goals. That's now happening with President Obama, only it's not just one event but three of them.

The pattern is clear. Despite claims by some of his conservative critics, and to the disappointment of his party's left, Obama is not turning out to be a liberal zealot. "He leans toward problem solving, doing what works, and what is politically sellable," says Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer. "He is not an ideologue."

First, consider Obama's choice last week of Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his nominee for the Supreme Court.

Obama chose Kagan because she won't totally alienate conservative senators who will play a big role in whether she is confirmed. Kagan is by all accounts a brilliant lawyer and a personable individual, and she was a relatively safe choice. She doesn't have a lengthy public record on controversial issues, and she has no judicial record at all because she has never been a judge. Some Republican senators and conservative organizations will try to pick a fight, but Kagan won't be a lightning rod. Obama allies say he wanted to avoid a nasty Senate battle over the high court that could set back his agenda on other issues, such as financial reform and immigration.

Second, there is Obama's handling of the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

He is trying to show that his administration is taking strong action to control the spill and prevent the environmental catastrophe that scientists say is a real possibility. Obama has been faulted by his critics for being slow in his response. But David Axelrod, one of Obama's senior advisers, says the president was just being cautious as he gathered the facts, and now he won't rush to judgment about the future of offshore drilling. Obama still wants to achieve energy independence, and offshore drilling still could be part of the solution, Axelrod says, but the president believes it must be done "in a responsible way."

Third, there is Obama's response to the attempted bombing in New York's Times Square.

Obama's aides say the country should be pleased because the alleged bomber, Faisal Shahzad, was arrested as he tried to take an airline flight out of the country. But his plan was not detected in advance, and his bomb failed to detonate, not because of any action by authorities but because the would-be terrorist bungled the attempt. That's not a very reassuring outcome.

As the government interrogates Shahzad and tries to gather information about other terrorist threats, Obama is adopting and expanding on some of former President George W. Bush's tough methods. He is pursuing terrorist leaders abroad in covert operations, using drones to decimate them and their camps. At the same time, Obama is restraining the emotional level of his rhetoric. His goal is to keep what Bush called "the war on terror" off the nightly news and thereby minimize public expectations about a fast end to the threat.

Zelizer argues that Obama's "pragmatic realism" had been evident for a long time, such as when the president rejected a "single payer" system that would have placed the government at the heart of the healthcare system, because it couldn't win passage in Congress. Overall, Zelizer says, Obama's approach "doesn't lean left or right. It's all over the place." As a result, his opponents might complain about his unpredictability, but they are often thrown off balance.

In each of the three ongoing cases, Obama has shown himself to be a careful, methodical decision maker who resists snap judgments. This might make him a bit tardy at the start of a crisis, as with the oil leak. But Obama's defenders say he also has shown decisiveness when it was called for, such as when he tackled the economic meltdown in early 2009.

It's clear that Obama isn't interested in futile political missions or inflaming the deep divisions in Washington and throughout the country. In sum, Obama is running a case-by-case presidency. That may be of little comfort to the ideologues on the left who don't think he is liberal enough on social and economic issues, or the advocates on the right who think he is moving too aggressively toward activist government. But it can be a good place to be as Obama tries to get swing voters and independents in his corner over the long term, especially when his re-election campaign gears up in 2012.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

 

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