President Adopts a Measured Course to Recapture the Middle

By JEFF ZELENY
NYT

WASHINGTON — President Obama opened the week by calling on Democrats to embrace his re-election campaign. He closed it by praising Republicans for forging a compromise to cut spending this year and avert a government shutdown.

The juxtaposition made clearer than ever the more centrist governing style Mr. Obama has adopted since his party’s big losses in November and his recapture-the-middle strategy for winning a second term.

But in agreeing Friday night to what he called the largest annual spending cut in the nation’s history, the president further decoupled himself from his party in Congress, exacerbating concerns among some Democrats about whether he is really one of them and is willing to spend political capital to defend their principles on bigger battles ahead.

The question of where Mr. Obama’s bottom line is on Democratic priorities will be that much more urgent to his party as House Republicans, energized by their success in resetting the terms of the debate in Washington, press an aggressive conservative agenda in the coming months that includes deeper spending cuts and a fundamental reshaping of the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

(More here.)