The Range of Opinion

Paul Krugman observes that “During the initial discussion of the stimulus, the debate was framed almost entirely as a debate between Obama and those who said the stimulus was too big; the voices of those saying it was too small were largely frozen out” which is odd given that there were lots of totally respectable people saying this. Krugman wonders: “Who makes these decisions?”

I think the answer is that largely the President does. When you have a progressive president make a proposal, and then you have conservative politicians attack him, the political debate becomes defined as a polarized debate between Obama and his conservative detractors. It’s a dynamic that I think you can understand a politician having trouble adjusting to immediately. It’s extremely helpful during a campaign to seek an image as “different” from a conventional member of your party, a much more “reasonable” and “pragmatic” figure. But once you assume office, unless you take great care with it the extreme position is just by definition the one you espouse. People in the White House say that if they’d come out of the gate talking about a $1.5 trillion stimulus there would have just been sticker shock and outrage on the Hill. But in retrospect maybe the best idea would have been for the White House to initially lay low, let some block of congressional liberal propose a $2 trillion stimulus package, let everyone freak out, then have Obama judiciously ride to the rescue with a $1.2 trillion compromise proposal.

Even better, of course, would be a DC press corps that took issues seriously on their own merits without trying to squeeze every policy debate into a talking heads cable news segment.