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*Obama takes his case to the independent center*

By David S. Broder
Wednesday, December 8, 2010; 8:00 PM

It took a month for Barack Obama to make clear what he has learned
from the midterm
election "shellacking<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/03/AR2010110303997.html>,"
but the time has not been wasted. Future political historians are likely to
trace his recovery - and reelection, if that's what happens - back to
decisions made in December.

In these past few days, he has regained the economic initiative from the
victorious Republicans, separated himself from the left of his own
party<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/07/AR2010120701402.html>
and
staked a strong claim to the territory where national elections are fought
and won: the independent center.

In opting to accommodate reality by acceding to the Republican demand
for maintaining
all the Bush tax
cuts<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/06/AR2010120605923.html>
and
obtaining a better price than many expected for his concessions, Obama has
done almost all that is possible at the moment to create a favorable
economic environment for the 2012 campaign. Add in a South Korean
trade pact<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120304293.html>
of
help to the rebounding auto industry, and the Midwest, that key battleground
where Republicans romped in 2010, begins to look salvageable.

Obama still faces great challenges - in managing the world's hot spots from
Afghanistan<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/afghanistan-pakistan/>
to
North Korea to Iran, and in the unresolved question of how to turn back the
threat of runaway debt and deficits.

But after a shaky period in which his leadership image became hazy, he has
begun to regain focus as the pragmatic liberal that he is - not the
hard-line socialist Republicans make him out to be but a president far more
practical and down to earth than his critics on the liberal flank of the
Democratic Party.

He has set the stage for follow-on proposals that can convert the cumbersome
tax system into a growth-spurring mechanism - and force Republicans to
explain and defend their preference for serving their wealthiest business
backers.

That is a winning posture for a president seeking a second term.

Without resorting to the obvious "triangulation" repositioning that Bill
Clinton employed to recover from the Republican resurgence in 1994 and set
the stage for his own second-term win, Obama has managed to place himself
where he wants to be: in the center of the American political spectrum.

By yielding temporarily to the GOP on its insistence for preserving the
top-bracket tax cuts, Obama has avoided a larger threat to a greater number
of voters: the hike in taxes that could easily have jeopardized a fragile
economic recovery.

In return, he won an extension of unemployment benefits and, more important,
a temporary reduction in payroll taxes that will provide a large shot in the
arm to economic growth.

When their constituents see the fatter paychecks, Democratic members of
Congress will have a hard time sustaining their carping about the lost
opportunity to engage the GOP in an old-fashioned campaign against the fat
cats.

Also, the $900 billion this deal will add to the national debt increases the
pressure on Obama and Congress to undertake the kind of tough-love budgetary
changes outlined by the presidential commission on
deficits<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/30/AR2010113005968.html>
.

But this simply improves the odds for tax reform, an effort that Obama is
now perfectly positioned to lead. Expect to see the White House offering a
plan to reduce individual and corporate income tax rates in return for
purging the IRS code of the thousands of loopholes that benefit special
interests.

That will put House Republicans in a position where they have to choose
between cooperating in giving Obama a major victory or accepting the
opprobrium of defending the status quo against the wishes of Tea Party
voters across the country. While opening that constituency to an Obama
foray, the events of the past few weeks have also signaled a clear breach
between the president and the increasingly unpopular left wing of his party
in Congress.

The divorce from the Pelosi Democrats has been brewing for a long time, but
it came visibly into view when so many House members whined about the
tax-and-budget deal with the Republicans.

If this wasn't a Sister Souljah moment, it was at least comparable to Bill
Clinton's decision to sign the 1996 welfare reform bill passed by a
Republican Congress - a step that sank Bob Dole's presidential campaign
before it really began.

Obama used his news conference
Tuesday<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/obama-speeches/speech/520/>
to
define himself, more clearly than ever before, as a raging moderate - a man
who recognizes that compromise is the key to serving a broad and diverse set
of constituencies, rather than fit some ideological standard of intellectual
purity.

This was the best showing for Obama in many months.

davidbroder@washpost.com
--
Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.co