To those who thought that the President’s speech last night was insufficiently centrist or insufficiently compromising? Get over it. The campaign has begun. Governing is over. Congress will pass the payroll tax extension and not much else. The debt ceiling and Bush tax cut debates will occur in the lame duck Congress and be largely dictated by the results of the Presidential election. That’s the reality of 20th and 21st Century government. Only a new mandate for our current or new President will result in him getting anything accomplished in 2013 and 2014. (Just like his mandate in 2008 was what allowed him to get stuff done in 2009 and 2010.) There is nothing new about this.
The President is being politically rational. The only chance he has to get his agenda - or an agenda which even closely resembles his - passed is to get re-elected. The time for governing is over. The time to win an election has begun.
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