Obama's Compromise: Neither Reaganesque nor Clintonian

Regarding President Obama's announcement of a proposed compromise with Republicans on taxes and extending unemployment benefits, it strikes me that there were two things he could have done politically: stand up to Republicans and try to stare them down over the notion of them holding the middle-class tax cuts hostage by wanting to give millionaires a tax break -- while not extending jobless benefits (at Christmas!) -- or claim the whole compromise idea as his own and declare victory.

Either option would have signaled a coherent strategy moving forward. We might not have agreed with his move, but it would have at least made strategic sense.

Instead, Obama chose a third way -- he conceded defeat, accepting a compromise that he admitted he didn't much care for. As Jonah Goldberg put it on Fox News, Obama was "not a guy declaring a victory. This is a guy made to eat spinach."

Obama, of course, was forced to eat that spinach because he is in deep political trouble, lacks the votes to pass his agenda, and now must worry about his dwindling re-election chances. To change that, he must seek to replicate the success of Presidents Reagan and Clinton who, after bad losses in midterm elections, went on to win re-election.

But Obama punted when presented with an opportunity to pick a strategic model.

Clinton, of course, faced with a similar situation, became famous for "triangulating." Liberal partisans will say such a move is a sign of weakness, but standing up to one's own party and ideology takes guts. As Clinton adviser Dick Morris recalled in his 2002 book, "Power Plays":

Every time Clinton's internal gyroscope called for a move to the center, the ideological police of his party were there to try to drag him back to the left. That he could defy them enough to balance the budget, cut crime, and slash welfare rolls is a testament to his courage and skill.

Ultimately, though, it was Clinton who led the way to the center, seemingly by choice (though we know that wasn't the case).

In his 1995 State of the Union address, he declared that "the era of big government is over." And during a prime-time TV address later that year, he announced a plan to eliminate the deficit. Unlike Obama, who was obviously conceding ground to Republicans Monday night, Clinton simply co-opted Republican ideas as his own. This infuriated his liberal base and frustrated Republicans, but it made also him look like both a winner and a moderate.

And make no mistake, revisionist history aside, liberals were furious with Clinton's shift. As Morris recalls, after the president's speech on balancing the budget, "The New York Times reported that senior Democrats were 'unsparing in their criticism,' and Rep. Nancy Pelosi . . . said Mr. Clinton was 'playing right into the hands of Republicans.' "

Despite all of this, Clinton managed to get re-elected.

Ironically, I think liberals want Obama to be stylistically more like Republican Ronald Reagan than like Democrat Bill Clinton. This is not to say that Reagan didn't compromise with Democrats; he did. But Reagan's name is not synonymous with 'triangulation" the way that Clinton's is.

Despite his affable personality, Reagan was always tough negotiator. One cannot imagine him taking the deal Obama announced on Monday.

"Before I took up my current line of work, I got to know a thing or two about negotiating when I represented the Screen Actors Guild," Reagan famously said. "After the studios, Gorbachev was a snap."

One important component of Reagan's negotiating style was his willingness to walk away from a bad deal, just as he did at the Reykjavik Summit with Gorbachev. Walking away from a deal took political courage, especially considering it occurred just one week before the 1986 midterm elections. (One can imagine liberals wishing Obama had displayed such toughness).

Reagan employed the same techniques throughout his two terms when negotiating with his adversaries in Congress.

And while a willingness to walk away from the table is vital, as Reagan author James Strock wrote in "Reagan on Leadership," it was The Gipper's ability to communicate to the American public that allowed him to be such a tough negotiator. Conversely, Reagan's successors -- talented men, to be sure -- were not as good at negotiating:

"Whatever their other merits, [George H.W.] Bush and Clinton each failed to present a compelling vision that provided a context for their own negotiations with a Congress controlled by the opposition party," writes Strock. "As a result, the agreements resulting from their negotiations on major legislative issues -- tax cuts, budget, welfare reform -- largely reflected their adversaries' goals."

Sound familiar?