To My Democratic Friends...

Passing Health Care Reform was, for your team, a historical achievement. But the President has been mostly unable to sell it to the American people. Partisans left and right hope|fear that the reform will become much more popular once enacted, but that is not likely -- Health Care Reform was far more controversial at inception than either Social Security, or Medicare. More likely, it will become even more polarizing and more bitterly fought over every election cycle on the state and federal level. As such it will be, at best, unevenly implemented.

The tragedy is that there were no shortage of "good ideas" (for example: better aligning incentives by severing insurance from employment or promoting alternatives to fee-for-service), that could have more sustainably passed with some bi-partisan support and, in-turn, built credibility toward more ambitious reform.

To hear your economists, the Stimulus program was too small to possibly succeed, but just large enough to be a political disaster for its backers.

After the financial crisis, there was a national consensus that "too big too fail" and "public risk, private reward" had to end. It is really hard to argue that Dodd-Frank accomplished either. On the contrary, the largest banks today, control more of the economy than ever, and the Government is still subsidizing bankers' bonuses.

Obama argues he is pursuing a savvy, subtle, long-game, foriegn policy. Certainly, running around the Middle East trying to impose Democracy wasn't brilliant. On the other hand, there has to be some sensible middle ground between that and policy that seems oddly complacent in the face of a world that is, in many respects, more dangerous now than it was four years ago.

To take one example: Moderate Muslims, are fighting with Islamicists for the future of their societies. According to the New York Times, "One of the principal goals of the extremists... is to pressure these transitional governments to enact and enforce strict laws against blasphemy. These laws can then be used to purge secularists and moderates." With that in mind, it is hard to see the administration's response to the youtube video protests as either savvy or subtle.

Mitt Romney ran to the left of Teddy Kennedy and to the right of Gingrich and Perry. He is a tactician, not an ideologue. As a tactician, he tracked to the right in the primaries, and back to the center in the general. In the face of conservative pressure in the primaries, he refused to jeopardize his general electibility by dis-owning "RomneyCare". While that should have given conservatives pause, it should re-assure, moderates and liberals. As President, he can be expected to be more like Clinton than Obama: refusing to jeopardize his re-electability playing to the unpopular passions of his base (in Romney's case, for example by dismantling the safety net or bomb, bomb, bombing Iran).

Finally, a Romney win will strengthen moderate Republicans in the way that Clinton's victory strengthened, for a time, "Third Way" Democrats. This would be a good thing.