…this is not 1933 and Barack Obama is no Franklin Roosevelt

The quote comes from Jay Cost’s excellent column over at RealClearPolitics.  Cost, one of the country’s great young thinkers about political matters, says Barack Obama misread his mandate by ceding the legislative agenda for health care and energy to the far left members of the House.  His election and mandate were much narrower than many on the left would like to believe – but they’re finding out now, aren’t they? 

Bismarck once commented that politics is the art of the possible. So far, the White House has not exhibited a good understanding of exactly what is possible in this political climate. It has been acting as though the President's election was a major change in the ideological orientation of the country.

A lot of liberals certainly saw it as such. All the strained comparisons of Obama to Franklin Roosevelt were a tipoff that many were talking themselves into the idea that the 2008 election created an opportunity for a substantial, leftward shift in policy. Yet the election of 2008 was not like the 1932 contest. It wasn't like 1952, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984, or even 1988, either. Obama's election was narrower than all of these. FDR won 42 of 48 states. Eisenhower won 39, then 41. Johnson won 44 of 50. Nixon won 49. Reagan won 44, then 49. George H.W. Bush won 40. Obama won 28, three fewer than George W. Bush in his narrow 2004 reelection.

This makes a crucial difference when it comes to implementing policy. Our system of government depends not only on how many votes you win, but how broadly distributed those votes are….

….the map is what it is: that big swath of red that runs through the middle of the country then swings right through the South should have been a tipoff that the stage was not set for coastal governance.

The President should have realized what was possible and what wasn't, and he should have used his substantial influence to push the House toward the kind of centrist compromise the Senate will ultimately require. That's called building a consensus - something he promised he'd do but has not yet made a serious effort at.

As I’ve been arguing for the past few weeks, Obama has no choice any longer but to take a middle road and get some bi-partisan support for some less radical legislation.  That’s a tough pill to swallow for an ideologue like our president but any other course of action will be disastrous for him.  As I’ve suggested before, whether or not he has it in him to compromise is still to be seen.