Obama's New Attitude: Don't Back Down
Yet, even if Democrats are more interested in compromise than Republicans are, Obama has only two years left to accomplish something with Congress -- after two years in which they seemed to accomplish almost nothing.
Republicans hope Obama overreaches but, considering the track record of their conservative wing, there's just as much risk of overreaching from the GOP side, too.
While they are pressured to oppose Obama, the central theme of their midterm congressional campaigns, they also are caught in the GOP's internal civil war.
Conservative extremists want to push for another government shutdown -- and even talk of impeachment -- to get what they want, GOP centrists want to show that they can govern without selling out their conservative principles.
Obama wants to show that he, too, can govern, despite relentless GOP attempts to show that he can't. In his first post-midterm news conference, he said he was going to "squeeze every last little bit of opportunity to help make this world a better place over these last two years." Now we're discovering what he meant. Whatever tools he has, he's going to use them while he can.
What does this mean for the Obama legacy, which surely must be on his mind?
Win or lose, say his associates, he has helped to change the terms of national political debate in a liberal-progressive direction.
Future presidential candidates will have to be "pro-immigration, pro-same-sex marriage, pro-economic fairness," said White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, who also predicted "a world where no climate denier will ever be president again."
Maybe. Grand predictions often have a way of falling into dust in American politics. Yet it is hard to deny that Obama has had a profound impact on the way we Americans talk about politics. You can hear it in the boldness of his actions and the ferocity of his opposition.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
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