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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 9, 2009 / 15 Shevat 5769

Obama at the Crossroads

By Dick Morris & Eileen Mc Gann


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Now Barack Obama has to decide whether he will govern from the center or from the left. In 1993, Bill Clinton faced the exact same decision, also over an economic stimulus package. His congressional allies from his own party wanted him to fill the package with every manner of pork spending they wanted. They promised him undying support, but Clinton realized that, if he followed their lead, he would get no Republicans.


The united opposition of the House Republicans to the Obama package sent the same message to the new president. And his inability to collect enough votes in the Senate, despite his top-heavy majority, amplifies it.


Clinton chose to stay within his own party. He didn't dare cross the various left-wing interest groups, each insisting on its own piece of the spending pie, and was not confident that the Republicans would support him in any event. He was worried about trying to appease the GOP but not getting enough votes on the right to offset the ones he was losing on the left. More permanently, he was not willing to move out of the pocket and become a scrambler. Like a well-protected quarterback, he opted to stay in the pocket and not stray outside on his own.


If Obama follows Clinton's course, the results will be predictable. The stimulus package will be defeated. It will become less and less popular every day as voters crack it open to see the pork spending inside. Americans do not agree, as they did not in 1993, that spending is the way to end a recession. Tax cuts, maybe, spending never.


If Obama strays from Clinton's course and moves to the center, courting Republican votes, he will lose Democratic support even as he begs for GOP backing. The Republicans will drive a hard bargain, demanding a smaller package than Obama wants and less spending that the Democrats crave. And, if Obama follows the GOP's lead, he will alienate his party and won't be able to count on them down the line.


So what should Obama do? He should move to the center. To ostracize the Republicans will force him to depend upon an ever more liberal group of Democrats, pushing him further and further to the left. In 1995, President Clinton told me, "I had moved so far to the left I didn't recognize myself." With each lurch to the left, Obama will lose popularity and, as his political horizon narrows, erode his capacity to govern.


But if Obama uses his popularity to force his party to accommodate enough Republicans to govern from the center, he will have a successful presidency. The logic of bipartisanship will lead him to make decisions that are popular with the voters as a whole, even if they strain his support on the left.


Whichever decision he makes — to move to the center or to the left — will set in motion a self-fulfilling prophesy. It will determine the course of his presidency. If he chooses wrong, he will wind up where Clinton did in 1994, losing Congress and his popularity. He could always recover as Clinton did, but how much better not to repeat the same mistakes as almost doomed the last Democratic presidency?

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JWR contributor Dick Morris is author, most recently, of "Fleeced: How Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies ... Are Scamming Us ... and What to Do About It". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.



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