A deficit of leadership.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Comment

It has been a disappointing season for progressives. Health care reform is slipping away. The Democrats lost Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. President Obama switched from stimulus to deficit reduction. And the Supreme Court ruled that corporations may use limitless cash to influence elections.

How, you might ask, did we reach this new low point so quickly?

There are still Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. There is still a Democrat in the White House. Polls still show that most Americans favor Medicare for all who want it.

But listening to the President's first State of the Union address, you would never guess that Democrats have both public opinion and large majorities in Congress on their side, or that it was the Republican Party that, less than a year ago, was in profound disarray.

"Change has not come fast enough," Obama acknowledged--especially for Americans who are losing their jobs.

But he failed to mention health care reform until nearly halfway through his speech--and then it was only a tepid cry to keep on plugging and, to Republicans, to come to him with new ideas--as if this legislation hadn't been the centerpiece of his Administration, as if it hadn't already made it all the way through both houses of Congress. Instead of going to bat for that legislation, or, better yet, a strong public option, he endorsed a program of tax cuts and a general spending freeze that brought Republicans to their feet.

Obama sounded like he had already lost the fight. "I take my share of the blame," Obama said, for the putative lack of public confidence in health care reform, and then he urged Republicans to "take another look."

He scolded his Democratic colleagues in his address to Congress, saying, "People expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills."

But the President himself has failed to show leadership. On the fundamental ideological issues of taxes, spending, and deficits, Obama is giving away the store.

In his federal budget, Obama proposes reining in debt with a crippling pay-as-you-go rule.

"Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican worldview," economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote of the spending freeze, "and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008."

Krugman calls Obama a "deficit peacock" as opposed to a "deficit hawk," because his gimmicky spending freeze doesn't address the big, long-term deficit-creating items like Medicare. And the...