Obama - playing it safe to catastrophe

The nut graf of Paul Krugman's latest column isn't at the start, or even close to it; it's buried at the bottom:

If I were President Obama, I’d be doing all I could to head off this prospect, offering some major new initiatives on the economic front in particular, if only to shake up the political dynamic. But my guess is that the president will continue to play it safe, all the way into catastrophe.

I think a lot of disillusioned liberals, as well as left-liberals like me who were never illusioned by Obama in the first place, recognize this is the bottom line.

But why?

The man only really spent two years in the Senate, back when it was under GOP control. He was running for president by 2007. So, he never saw, up close and in person, even a fraction of how obstructionist the GOP can be in the Senate.

Along with that, I sincerely believe the man still thinks he can charm Republicans by the suasion of his voice. In other words, he's still too illusioned of himself. Hey, Barry, Prez Kumbaya, it ain't happening.

Second, the man either never learned the art of political strategy in the Illinois Senate, or else, related to the above, has abandoned it. Especially with the stimulus, when he and/or Rahm Emanuel decided it couldn't come in over $1 trillion, they negotiated that, so to speak, in advance of any actual negotiations. $999 billion should have been the final number. Even that would be too small, but not as much too small as what we got.

Third, he refuses to be Machiavellian, play hardball, or whatever. He could be taking a page out of Harry Truman's playbook and calling Congress into special session. With the current all-the-time election cycle, etc., this would crap on obstructionists of both parties; especially, it would keep "safe" GOP senators from campaigning for GOP challengers. (And, I have already thought of far m ore Machiavellian ideas, like threatening to free up time for 535 FBI agents to assist Members of Congress with Patriot Act "protection."

Meanwhile, going far beyond Krugman's most recent column, Joan Walsh lays it on the line:

The Obama team seems to think 2012 will take care of itself, as long as they burnish that shining Obama "brand," which requires reaching out to Republicans and independents and ignoring the pesky left, with its old culture-war grudges and its subversive demand for greater economic fairness. I've heard some smart folks speculate that the White House may even welcome a Republican takeover, the better to "let Obama be Obama," and continue to play out his fantasy of being a Democratic Ronald Reagan, creating a generation of what he used to call "Obamacans" and realigning politics for his lifetime.

If anyone in the White House still believes that, they are delusional.

Sadly, Joan, Mayor McCheese himself still believes it, and that's the problem.

Beyond that, Walsh also notes he "doesn't get" the other side:

Apart from accepting too many Republican prescriptions for the economy, Obama also waxes vague and platitudinous when asked about the extreme forces he's up against, like birthers, Beck and Limbaugh.