Fareed Zakaria Strikes Out

Fareed Zakaria's a super-sharp person, and a very good writer.  Most of the time, I agree with what he has to say.  But in this week's Time, he has a column that I think really misses the point  (password protected).  The gist of it is that liberals shouldn't be disappointed with Obama because he is essentially a pragmatist who is willing to make tough choices for the sake of getting things done.

The line that strikes me is when Zakaria accuses Obama's base of "making the best the enemy of the good."  But I think he misses the distinction between good "pragmatic" policy and bad pragmatic policy.  Essentially, no one faults Obama for compromising (besides Tea Party nuts who can't see reality and realize that the President is an ideological moderate who thrives on compromise).  Obama's critics on the left don't suggest that the issue is his willingness to compromise-- the issue is his acceptance of bad ideas.  The latest case of this was the debate over the debt ceiling.  To start with, as Robert Rubin pointed out in a recent interview (I THINK it was in Business Week, but I'm not sure), the debt ceiling ideally wouldn't exist, but, given that it does, would not be a political issue.  Instead, Obama not only allowed the fringe of the Republican Party to hold the nation's credit hostage, but also came to a deal that is, at heart, bad for the economy.  The "best" deal would have combined significant short-term stimulus with a long-term project aimed at increasing revenue and cutting health care costs.  A good deal might have put social security on the table.  An acceptable deal might have cut $2 of spending for every $1 of tax hikes.  Instead, we got a deal that makes no effort at health care cost control, raises no revenue, and slashes spending in the short term in an economy that suffers from... a short-run lack of demand.

In other words, it's frankly terrible policy.  Those who worked with Bill Clinton say that he would go into a debate looking to find the "best" answer (and he had a very competent technical staff to do that).  Once he arrived at that answer, he compromised and might have whittled away at it, but still gotten to an acceptable result.  Obama begins by getting to a best answer (using many of the same experts Clinton had at his disposal), proceeds to weigh what the counter-proposal might be, splits the difference, and then capitulates in negotiations.  The result is terrible policy that encourages ideological extremists to hold the country hostage.  And it's threatening to turn Obama's presidency into a failure, even with know-nothings like Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty real challengers for the presidency (I think Mitt Romney is smart enough to realize that, regardless of what he has to say on the stump, the Tea Party's dream government is nothing short of disastrous policy).