Washington Post’s Dan Balz: Ambitious Blueprint a Big Risk The President Is Willing to Take

Posted by Kendall Harmon

President Obama's first budget -- with its eye-popping $1.75 trillion deficit, a health-care fund of more than $600 billion, a $150 billion energy package and proposals to tax wealthy Americans even beyond what he talked about during his campaign -- underscores the breadth of his aspiration to reverse three decades of conservative governance and use his presidency to rapidly transform the country.

But in adopting a program of such size, cost and complexity, Obama has far exceeded what other politicians might have done. As a result, he is now gambling with his own future and the success of his presidency.

William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution cited three parallels to Obama's far-reaching program: Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1932 New Deal blueprint, Lyndon B. Johnson's 1965 Great Society agenda, and Ronald Reagan's 1981 call to dramatically limit the size and power of government, which set the framework for public policy debate ever since.

"A consequence of the economic events of the last two years has been to blow up that framework," Galston said. "It has lost substantial public credibility. President Obama now has his chance to make his case for a fundamentally different approach."

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama

3 Comments
Posted February 27, 2009 at 6:38 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Harvey wrote:

When the peoples representatives start screaming maybe Obama will wake up and start listening.

February 27, 10:14 am | [comment link]
2. Jeffersonian wrote:

As a result, he is now gambling with his own future and the success of his presidency.

The fact that anyone still listens to a word of what Jimmy Carter has to say gives the lie to this assertion.  Obama will be fawned over for generations for what he is.  What he’ll have done to the nation will have little bearing on it.  We’re witnessing the Peronization of the American economy, and we are not immune to the fate Juan Peron doomed Argentina to.

February 27, 10:42 am | [comment link]
3. evan miller wrote:

Very apt analogy, Jeffersonian.  I hope we avoid the fate of Argentina, which went from a nation with the second highest gold reserves in the Western Hemisphere and one of the highest standards of living, to a bankrupt socialist state during Peron’s disasterous regime.

February 27, 10:47 am | [comment link]
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