In Budget Choices, a Test of Obama’s Political Skills

By JOHN HARWOOD
NYT

WASHINGTON — Whatever else it is, President Obama’s budget is a political gamble of the first order.

In his ambition to put his own stamp on liberalism and to move domestic policy leftward, Mr. Obama has much going for him.

The nation seems to be yearning for leadership, and his political standing is strong. In an era where taxpayers and markets are confronting bad numbers in the trillions, the price tags on some of his initiatives do not seem quite so breathtaking, and, in any case, good economic policy demands that the fiscal floodgates remain open for a while. Populist anger could render Republican arguments against taxing the rich less powerful.

But Mr. Obama faces many constraints. He is asking Congress to take on a wide-ranging set of complicated issues all at once, after years during which it had trouble grappling directly with almost any of them. His own party remains seared by the last time it followed a new Democratic president on a course of tax increases and ambitious social engineering. Interest groups, while demonized by the White House, have hardly fled from Washington and are already mobilizing for battles that could have big winners and losers.

Like Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. Obama “does have the advantage of a crisis,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma.

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