Meet the new boss, different but cagy like the old boss

I declared The Who's 1971 hit to be a theme song for the Obama era. It was an obvious call, but the lyrics are becoming even more apropos...

The change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that’s all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they were all flown in the last war

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
No, no!

...

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Obama may be the Un-Rove, as Andrew says.

Yet Obama is cagy, just in a different way:

Look at how he's framed the debate since the election. Every single symbolic act has been inclusive and sober. From that speech in Grant Park to the eschewal of euphoria on Inauguration Day; from the George Will dinner invite to the Rick Warren invocation; from meeting the House Republicans on the Hill to convening a fiscal responsibility summit; from telegraphing to all of us Obamacons that he wasn't a fiscal lunatic to ... unveiling the most expansive, liberal, big government reversal of Reagan any traditional Democrat would die for.

Smart, isn't he? He won the stimulus debate long before the Republicans realized it (they were busy doing tap-dances of victory on talk radio, while he was building a new coalition without them). And now, after presenting such a centrist, bi-partisan, moderate and personally trustworthy front, he gets to unveil a radical long-term agenda that really will soak the very rich and invest in the poor. Given the crisis, he has seized this moment for more radicalism than might have seemed possible only a couple of months ago.

He ran on a rediscovery of Clintonomics and said in his speech to Congress on Tuesday night: "As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President’s Day… Not because I believe in bigger government — I don’t. Not because I’m not mindful of the massive debt we’ve inherited — I am."

Yet two days later he puts forward the most progressive populist long-term budget in more than 40 years.

That's not channeling Clinton-era policies.. It's a new amalgam of FDR and LBJ, updated for our times.

We knew some of this stuff was coming. And many decided to vote for him anyway because of the worse-er failures of Bush Republicanism. But we didn't know it would be quite this audacious. Can he pull this long-term growth of government off competently? Quite possibly. But will it be sustainable without The Empiricist at the helm? Because we'll be doomed if in 2016 or beyond we elect another incompetent bumbler like George W. Bush or an incurious demagogue like Sarah Palin to manage a bulked-up federal government. Can you imagine the disaster?

Andrew continues:

The risk is, at least, a transparent risk. If none of this works, he will have taken a massive gamble and failed. The country will be bankrupt and he will have one term. His gamble with the economy may come to seem like Bush's gamble in Iraq. But if any of it works, if the economy recovers, and if the GOP continues to be utterly deaf and blind to the new landscape we live in, then we're talking less Reagan than FDR in long-term impact.

It's going to be a riveting first year, isn't it?

Just the first one?

Wake up America, you're getting a bit more change than you bargained for. It's nice that we're getting the country back on track, but let's try to avoid another derailment shall we?

Just how we'll manage to do so with a hapless, bigoted, morally bankrupt Republican opposition that has literally gone crazy remains to be seen.