E. J. Dionne
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If President Obama's primary task is to restore economic growth, he has also been waging a quiet, long-term campaign to ease the nation's divisions around religious and moral questions.
Obama almost certainly hopes that congressional opposition to funding abortion will make this issue go away. His success as a cultural peacemaker depends on his ability to move the country's moral discussion toward social justice and economics. Paradoxically, perhaps, he'd rather have citizens thinking about taxes and collapsing banks than about abortion.
Obama's Cultural Diplomacy
By E. J. Dionne Jr. Thursday, March 5, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/04/AR2009030403376.html
The Obama Doctrine is a form of realism unafraid to deploy American power but mindful that its use must be tempered by practical limits and a dose of self-awareness. Those are the limits that defenders of the recent past have trouble accepting.
The Obama Doctrine
By E.J. Dionne Jr. Thursday, April 16, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/15/AR2009041502902.html
Yes, this is the year Congress will finally give every American access to health insurance.
Getting there won't be pretty. But for the first time since the passage of Medicare in the 1960s, the forces favoring action on health-care reform are stronger than the forces of cynicism and obstruction.
Health Care's Year
By E.J. Dionne Jr. Monday, April 6, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/05/AR2009040501721.html
It took less than three weeks for the real Barack Obama to come into view. He turns out to be both a conciliator and a fighter.
These are not contradictions in his character. They represent different sides of a politician who sees some issues as more susceptible to compromise than others and who wants his adversaries to know that his easygoing style does not make him a pushover.
Obama's tougher rhetoric and terrible new economic news helped push a handful of wavering senators to agree to a compromise stimulus bill on Friday. Still, there was a cost to Obama's delayed response to Republican provocations. By giving conservatives a week to savage the House-passed stimulus, Obama weakened his negotiating hand.
So Obama's decision to fight Republicans on the stimulus bill doesn't mean he's lost his conciliatory instincts. It means he's neither a chump nor a wimp. There are rank-and-file cultural conservatives willing to join Obama to end the feuds of the 1960s. But Washington conservatives, insisting that tax cuts are the one and only important matter in American life, are stuck in a 1980s time warp.
The Fighting Conciliator
By E. J. Dionne Jr. Monday, February 9, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/08/AR2009020801717.html
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