Obama the pragmatist is on full view in this presser. I say that without judgment. It’s just that he’s never been so crystal clear in setting out his view of compromise, centrism, and the role of politics. He dismisses the NYT editorial page (and the WSJ’s) as not representative of the country.
The key line for me probably wasn’t his dismissal of “sanctimonious” liberals but his contention that those who think he’s caving now would have called Social Security and Medicare in their original more modest configurations to be betrayals when measured against “some abstract ideal.”
