Just Because You're Attacked on Both Sides Doesn't Mean You're Right

     Wow. Someone in the media actually knows this. Thank you Bill Keller. There is no more tired Meme among the Beltway press than the suggestion that it does. Yet, Keller-also not at all what you usually hear form this press-is praising Obama for showing leadership. Knock me over with a feather! Where is Bob Woodward now? He also contrary to the Obama bashers on the Left argues that the President has given us a progressive budget.

     Let's have a recap of three things Keller has said that you never hear:

     1. Having both sides attack you doesn't mean you're right.

     2. Obama exercises leadership

     3. Obama is a progressive.

     "The first thing to be said about the budget President Obama delivered this week is that, at last, he has one. Until now his answer to the brutal specifics of the Republicans’ law-of-the-jungle budget has been a slogan – “a balanced approach.” Now he has provided (mostly) hard, credible numbers to show what he means by that slogan. I wish he’d produced such a document a year ago and campaigned on it, which would strengthen his claim to a popular mandate. But give the guy credit. It was time to put up or shut up, and he put up."

     "The second thing to say is that it IS a balanced approach – not in the sense that we now hear outcries from some voices on the left added to the ceaseless racket on the right. (The fact that you are being attacked from both sides does not necessarily prove you are right.) It is balanced in the sense that – unlike the Republican version, which is a radical bet on austerity and the mercies of the ungoverned marketplace – it harmonizes short-term needs and long-term responsibilities. It is balanced in the sense that it is not an opening bid – so the White House insists, and I hope they mean it – but a genuine attempt to reconcile rival interests in the national interest."

     "The third thing to say is that, although it contains some compromises, it should not be dismissed by liberals as a “centrist budget.” It is a progressive budget. (For a thoughtful, progressive take on it, see Robert Greenstein’s analysis at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities website.) It is a budget that, if enacted, would pump money now into job creation, would stabilize the long-term deficit problem, would help alleviate the growing inequality in the country, would make some important investments in our future (including a universal pre-K program), would pocket some savings from the Pentagon (not yet enough, as Fred Kaplan rightly complains on Slate) and, finally, would face up to the crisis in entitlements before it becomes truly alarming."

    http://keller.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/obamas-progressive-budget/

    I don't love everything Keller says. He apparently harbors the impression that SS and Medicare need "saving" that at least is highly questionable:

    "The disappointment from the left has focused on Obama’s cuts to Medicare and Social Security. These programs are not crises today, but they are crises to come as the baby-boomers surge into retirement age. We can make up some of the shortfall by raising taxes, but if we bail out Social Security and Medicare without reforming them they will gobble up the money that should be invested in our crumbling infrastructure, our educational competitiveness, basic research, etc. I might quibble with some of Obama’s specifics, but his proposals to save Medicare and Social Security are generally prudent and designed to protect those who need the programs most."

       I reject the idea that SS is ever in serious trouble. Medicare may actually already be helped by ObamaCare; we'll know better in a few years. Also no one discusses it but health costs have actually gone down considerably the last 3 years and haven't actually risen since the mid 90s. 

     Still if nothing else even if Keller is something of a VSP it shows the successfulness of Obama's gambit. 

      "Does his budget, or something close, stand a chance? It’s up against a Republican party whose leaders would rather stand smugly pat and let the job-killing effects of the “sequester” spending cuts continue to do their damage – anything to avoid extracting another nickel in taxes from the comfortable. But Obama shows signs of being politically rejuvenated. You see it in his refusal to give up on the gun issue. And you see it in his dinner-table budget outreach to any Republican in Congress who might retain a shred of civic-mindedness. He seems to be in the fray for real. Better late than never."

      If Keller's piece is at all typical of the kind of thing that the Beltway media is saying now it will put more pressure on the GOP to act. It-along with the American people demanding action-totally isolate them. 

     P.S. Keller at least is decidedly un-Serious in admitting that having both sides criticize you isn't by itself a virtue.