Charles Krauthammer is frequently a massive tool. Particularly when he's rubbing the neocon erogenous zones - Iran, Israel - he's almost always insufferable. But where most right-wing punditry has engaged in wishful thinking and denial about the future of conservatism, Krauthammer has always possessed the ability to be clear-eyed about the opposition and acknowledge unpleasant realities.
His latest column takes on Obama's critics on the left, as well as those on the right who think he's the "new Carter"...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Viewed in real time, no political change ever feels like enough. But in the long view of history, change is slow and requires a number of half-steps and false starts to be truly transformative. Krauthammer argues in this piece that Obama has already made an irreversible mark on American society.
Consider what he has already achieved. Obamacare alone makes his presidency historic. It has ... put the country inexorably on the road to national health care...
Second, there is major financial reform, which passed Congress on Thursday. Its 2,300 pages will create at least 243 new regulations that will affect not only the big banks but just about everyone, including ... "storefront check cashiers, city governments, small manufacturers, home buyers and credit bureaus."
He goes on to cite the stimulus, the changes to student loans, new EPA authority to regulate emissions, and ongoing attempts to pass cap-and-trade.
He acknowledges, as many here have pointed out, that these changes do not represent ideal progressive accomplishments. What they do represent, though, are giant first steps to the left, steps that will be nearly impossible to take back even if November proves disastrous for Dems.
Obama's most far-reaching accomplishment is his structural alteration of the U.S. budget.
These are not [merely] temporary...they are structural deficits...the real money is in entitlements, most specifically Medicare and Medicaid. But Obamacare freezes these out as a source of debt reduction.
The result? There just isn't enough to cut elsewhere to prevent national insolvency. That will require massive tax increases -- most likely a European-style value-added tax. Just as President Ronald Reagan cut taxes to starve the federal government and prevent massive growth in spending, Obama's wild spending -- and quarantining health-care costs from providing possible relief -- will necessitate huge tax increases.
Which is what so many of Obama's critics on the left were hoping for - reorganizing and redistributing the wealth in society through heavier taxation on the wealthy and greater social programs. Once these programs are in place, they will be very hard to take away. The tax increases will be urgently necessary to prevent financial ruin. And the new era of progressivism has begun - closing the wealth gap, increasing the safety net, and solidifying scores of voters behind an active government.
All this leads Krauthammer to point out what many have said since before Obama was even elected - he's far more likely to be the left's Ronald Reagan, than to be the next Jimmy Carter.
The net effect of 18 months of Obamaism will be to undo much of Reaganism. In his early years, Reagan was bitterly attacked from his right. Obama is attacked from his left for insufficient zeal on gay rights, immigration reform, closing Guantanamo -- the list is long. The critics don't understand the big picture. Obama's transformational agenda is a play in two acts.
Act One is over. The stimulus, Obamacare, financial reform have exhausted his first-term mandate. It will bear no more heavy lifting. The rest of the first term will be spent consolidating these gains (writing the regulations, for example) and preparing for Act Two.
The next burst of ideological energy -- massive regulation of the energy economy, federalizing higher education and "comprehensive" immigration reform (i.e., amnesty) -- will require a second mandate, meaning reelection in 2012.
And here is where Krauthammer makes the observation that has so many Congressional Democrats and activists on the left fuming with the President right now... President Obama doesn't fear Speaker Boehner as much as we do.
For Obama, 2010 matters little. If Democrats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will probably have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as the foil for his 1996 reelection campaign.
Obama is down, but it's very early in the play. Like Reagan, he came here to do things. And he's done much in his first 500 days. What he has left to do he knows must await his next 500 days -- those that come after reelection.
The real prize is 2012. Obama sees far, farther than even his own partisans. Republicans underestimate him at their peril.
Obama sees far. That is the truth that helped him rise from obscurity to the Presidency in such a short time, defeating the Clinton machine and all America's racial barriers in the process. And that is why, despite my disappointment in the speed of progress, I still have faith in the President to re-align this country's politics in the only way that it could ever be done: slowly but surely.