Obama Talked Progressive on Deficits, But Will He Walk Conservative?

nymag.com — President Obama’s big deficit speech yesterday was received with a mixture of euphoria and relief among the left commentariat. The immediate consensus was that the president had given a strong defense of the progressive principles on which he would rely in the coming budget negotiations. Progressives have yearned for him to use the bully pulpit for this purpose from the beginning, and there is a good case to be made that if he had, conservatives would not have been able to convince the American people that the deficit is the cause of the country’s financial woes, rather than the natural consequence of mitigating them. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed and the president is now operating within the opposition's framework rather than his own. Now comes the hard part: matching deeds to words. And on that front, the president still has a lot of work to do.

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