Guardian UK: Obama's partisan pragmatism

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Obama's partisan pragmatism
Now that Barack Obama has outlined his agenda to Congress, liberals are elated and conservatives are scared

Dan Kennedy
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 February 2009 16.00 GMT


The punditocracy today is alive with the discovery that we have our first liberal president since Lyndon Johnson.

To be sure, the recently enacted $787bn stimulus bill was hardly the handiwork of a conservative. But since it was couched as an emergency measure and backed by economists across a wide ideological spectrum, it didn't tell us a whole lot about where Barack Obama intended to take the rest of his presidency.

Now we know. From healthcare to education, from energy independence to financial reform, the president laid out a stunningly ambitious agenda in his address to Congress Tuesday night. He risked parody by promising to cure cancer as well, but you've got to admire Obama's self-confidence.

The left-leaning editorial page of the New York Times tells us that Obama "rose to the occasion", and seems finally to have broken past the overly cautious approach that had marked his governing style thus far. And the Times is not alone in its favourable reaction.

"Tuesday night's speech was the most comprehensive manifesto he has offered yet for his new rendezvous with America's progressive tradition," writes EJ Dionne, a liberal commentator, in the Washington Post. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/feb/25/obama-congress-speech-media