"If you would have told the average liberal four years ago that their president would pass health care reform, repeal don’t ask/don’t tell, end the war in Iraq, and start downsizing the Pentagon—and that, after all that, Obama would still be in a strong position to win re-election

.

.. they would probably have taken the deal. The process was messy and endlessly frustrating, but it got to the right place"

And add the killing of Osama Bin Laden !

The New Republic
In Which I Question Obama’s “Long-Game” Strategy
By Noam Scheiber
February 14, 2012


In Which I Question Obama’s “Long-Game” Strategy


Some excerpts :

But this logic breaks down as it relates to the economy. When it comes to the economy, you can’t simply tell people not to worry about three years of punishingly high unemployment because it worked out in the end. Those were still three years of punishingly high unemployment, and they were absolutely miserable for the large number of people who couldn’t provide for their families, or who worried they wouldn’t be able to.

Worse, if you buy Andrew’s long-game argument, some otherwise avoidable amount of pain was actually necessary. In order for the rope-a-dope strategy to work, after all, you have to patiently absorb a lot of blows—blows you otherwise would have countered—before you make your move and reclaim the initiative. As a practical matter, those blows came when the administration was either too preoccupied with deficit-reduction, not focused enough on getting more stimulus, or both. (Obviously, the hundreds of billions in stimulus Obama did procure was enormously helpful. But he missed opportunities for more, both in the original Recovery Act and later on.

So, yes, Obama’s long-game appears to have worked politically, to the extent that it was a conscious strategy. But substantively, it left something to be desired. And, in the end, a president has to be judged on both counts.

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