Incidentally, like this tax deal or don’t like this tax deal, I think this counts as a good example of the “triangles are two dimensional” principle. The President struck a deal that the left doesn’t like and that the right doesn’t like, but that also isn’t simply equidistant between the leftwing option (hold firm and let all tax cuts expire unless the GOP caves on tax cuts for the rich) or the rightwing option (hold firm and blame Obama for the expiration of all tax cuts). Instead, reversing a lot of his recent rhetoric, Obama has positioned himself as the guy maximally devoted to securing as much short-term fiscal expansion as is politically feasible.
Now of course some people don’t like it and it’s possible that future legislative standoffs will end disastrously. But unlike the pay freeze gambit this is how triangulation is actually supposed to work. Lifting us off a binary debate over more income tax cuts or less income tax cuts and onto a package that includes lots of other stimulative measures.
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