Strategic Blueprints, Views on News • December 8th, 2008

The game changer

by Chris Lato

It didn’t take long for some on the left to become disillusioned with President-elect Obama’s early policy shifts and Cabinet appointments (and for Team Obama to start pushing back).

A certain degree of this is to be expected. With Democrats making a clean sweep at the federal (and, in Wisconsin, state levels), plenty of Dems think now is the time to make the big, bold moves that couldn’t be done until now. Universal health care, pulling out of Iraq ASAP, and higher taxes, particularly aimed at businesses, to cite three examples.

However, Obama’s early moves suggest he recognizes that particularly in the current economic climate, the time isn’t right. He can argue, as virtually every other incoming leader before him has, that circumstances have changed – the situation is different/worse than he understood it to be going in.

The question becomes: will Obama feel the pressure to throw the left a bone – whether through a Cabinet appointment or policy initiative? He’ll have to be careful which issues he chooses to work on, though. President Clinton learned the hard way about this when he bowed to pressure to take up gays in the military right after being elected.

There will be members of Congress and, in Wisconsin, the Legislature, who will be more than happy to step up with bills that will appeal to those on the left to far-left side of the spectrum. Some will get serious consideration, but many more will get the requisite headline or two before withering on the vine. For now, like it or not, the economy is a game-changer that will put grander, costlier plans on hold out of necessity.

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