I think Ezra's analysis is spot-on. The President has clearly indicated a change in approach with his jobs speech and, as Ezra notes, with the call (again) for tax increases on the rich. If the President can stick with it, he may turn things around. But his problem in the past has been two-fold - going bold, and staying bold. We're seeing signs of going bold, and that's great. Now let's see some stamina. From Ezra Klein:
The Obama administration got to test its postpartisan approach and in its first real electoral test, it failed. Republicans refused to cut the deal, voters weren’t interested in parsing reports about which backroom players offered what concessions, and the impression of Obama as a weakened leader without a clear plan for dealing with the economic crisis solidified. By contrast, the more traditional Democratic strategy -- protect popular government programs, oppose further tax cuts for the wealthy -- had worked a few months earlier, and was still clearly scaring Republican candidates.
The flaw in the White House’s plan, as it turned out, was that they were letting the Republicans have it both ways. The White House was joining with them in proposing unpopular entitlement cuts and talking about deficits rather than jobs, but they weren’t getting the grand compromise that they needed to show voters that compromising was an effective form of presidential leadership.
The first sign the White House was realizing this was when they proposed paying for their jobs plan by taxing the rich. That was a clear nonstarter in Congress -- even among some of the Democrats -- and an unusual foray into policy-as-messaging for a White House that tended to prefer presenting policy proposals that were already a compromise.
Next week, we’ll see if that was simply a temporary divergence from the One True Path or a whole new strategy. If the White House emerges with a plan that is firmly in the middle and makes it impossible to run against Republican ideas in 2012, then we’ll know they’re not interested in returning to the post-Ryan strategy, and they still think being the adults in the room will win them the election. If they emerge with a plan that cuts the deficit in ways that the American people like and the Republicans can’t accept, we’ll know they have chosen to change direction sharply.
