MONDAY NIGHT’S compromise by President Obama – many will say “climbdown” – was a political calculation that will enrage liberal supporters. But his strategists insist it could be the basis of him winning re-election in 2012. Much more compromise with Republicans is likely to follow from a president whose party was mauled in November’s mid-terms and who is now determined to live or die by his bipartisan credo.
Mr Obama and congressional Republicans have reached a tentative deal on a major economic package that, among other measures, will preserve Bush tax concessions for families at all income levels for two years, extend for another year emergency dole payments that were due to lapse, and cut payroll taxes by 2 per cent for every worker for a year. And to hell with the ballooning budget deficit – the deal will add $700 billion (€520 billion) a year to the national debt. Preserving the Bush tax cuts alone will cost $4 trillion over a decade.
The deal will be sold to reluctant Democrats, who have yet to sign off on it, as economic pump priming and a quid pro quo to save the benefits of hard-pressed jobless. But many will be furious the president was not prepared to stand by his earlier determination at least to raise taxes on families earning over $250,000.
Within days of the mid-terms, Mr Obama was talking of the need for a “mid-course correction” and on Monday seems to have demonstrated that this was more than the usual rhetoric. Although many Democrats saw the electoral losses as a reflection of the alienation of the party’s traditional base, Mr Obama’s backroom team pointed to what they saw as the critical need to win back independent voters who supported the party in 2008 but have deserted it since.
Both presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton had lower approval ratings after their midterm defeats while Mr Obama’s advisers believe his have held steady – currently 47 per cent – because, as one told the Washington Post, “much of the country still believes he is reasonable”. According to a Pew Research Center poll taken after the elections, 59 per cent of independents say he should work with Republican leaders, while 29 per cent said he should stand up to them. Hence the burnishing of his credentials as perhaps Washington’s one and only genuinely bipartisan politician. The danger is that he will get credit from no one – Democrats will despise the betrayal and Republicans will see in it a sign of weakness and press insatiably for more concessions.