Ed Kilgore passes along some news about President Obama’s intention to talk about deficit reduction (for a refreshing change of pace!). I think this is about right:

[I]t’s safe to say that some rhetorical support for a deficit reduction “grand bargain” and for “openness” to “entitlement reform” is pretty much backed into the ObamaWorld cake, and if he stays at past levels of generality and of “deals” being contingent on unlikely GOP concessions, there will be grumbling on the Left but nothing mutinous.

If, however, Obama gets more specific and less contingent—endorsing, say, the actual Simpson-Bowles recommendation as central to his second-term agenda—then we’ll hear something worse than grumbling. No, at this late date you won’t see any “liberal revolt” against Obama’s re-election, but you could very well hear Democratic congressional leaders and candidates refusing to get on any Simpson-Bowles bus. It’s that sort of trouble the White House must carefully consider before taking a step that would undoubtedly win cheers from lots of Beltway pundits and a handful of centrist Democrats—and probably from Bill Clinton.

I don’t know if I’ve put it quite this way before, but my real gripes with Obama aren’t usually ideological. Sure, he does buy into the centrist deficit ideology (though faith might be a better term there), and maybe a few other things too. My gripes with him tend to be on the execution side–erratic ability to read people, lacking that “sixth sense” to know what the public wants from him in any given occasion, trouble scoping out obstacles to his agenda, often iffy communication skills and sometimes wishful thinking. Ultimately, this is all leadership-y kinds of stuff, and being as Obama wasn’t terribly experienced at those kinds of roles going in, it wasn’t surprising he was going to have trouble with all the tools he needed (OTOH, he’s proven very strong on policy fluency, decisiveness, and managing to keep alive in an unfavorable political environment). He shows signs of getting better on many of these things, to be sure.

But the deficit fixation keeps getting worse, and if you were inclined to make the “Obama’s a stooge to rich people” critique, this would be probably the first point you would want to use (even more so than the Wall St. bailout, which was a Bush/Paulson idea). During a recession, tax revenue falls and social spending rises, which tends to create deficits. This is not a bad thing, it just is. For a self-identified Keynesian* like Obama, recessions are when you prime the pump. When things get moving again, you ease off the gas. Macro 101 stuff, really. But regardless of this, when the economy revives, tax revenue will increase and social spending will dip, because people will be working more and doing better. Talking about taking action on debt and deficits now is sort of like getting measured for a suit you’re going to wear in five years. There’s no way of assuming what will happen in that time–you might gain or lose weight, you might change taste in clothing, maybe you’ll be rich and won’t want the suit (or you’ll be poor and won’t be able to afford it). Admittedly, this metaphor proves too much–you could argue that it’s an indictment of all planning, which I do not agree with. But in this particular situation, when we’re in a highly atypical economic situation, the suit metaphor is adequate–it’s as though you know the likelihood of drastic changes in your life is high, but you still want to get measured for the suit. Why would you do this?

To impress, perhaps, other people with. Like the wealthy centrist finance types, in D.C. and Wall Street, who see the deficit as the key issue of our times. In the present context, it’s practically a boutique issue in the grand scheme. So why spend such time pushing it? Why put it in such precious space (i.e. the DNC acceptance speech)? The plausibility of the issue as an attempt to reach out to independent voters is laughable, surveys time and again show that the public has little knowledge of what deficits even are. Surely someone as politically successful as Barack Obama, President of the United States, knows the difference between core values and opinions that everyone believes because everyone believes them? Since everyone talks about deficits in negative terms, voters view them that way, but it’s inch-deep and won’t move votes. In fact, pushing for cuts nearly destroyed Obama’s presidency, lest we forget. (Toughness and practicality are, ultimately, core values.)

I don’t think Obama is actually conspiring with rich people to cut entitlements. I think this is about legacy. The odds of Obama passing any significant reform in a second term, aside from the decidedly less-than-even money prospect of Democrats retaking the House and holding the Senate, are nil. Some sort of debt deal might have been pushed by the likes of Peter Orszag and Tim Geithner during the first term as something “big” to take on after the Recovery Act and health care, but now it’s likely to be Obama’s last chance to make a mark on domestic policy. Not a good chance, but given Obama’s ambitions it’s unsurprising he latched onto it to begin with. The entire thing’s an ideological nightmare that has done nothing but hurt Obama–there’s simply no way to win this politically, since the issues are too complicated for the media to even begin to present to the public (hence an oversimplifed “free-spending Democrats” meme), and most of the people who do care about deficits are Republicans who aren’t going to be pried away from a party that could give a rip about them. It’s nuts to keep this dream alive. But here we go again.

* Which, believe it or not, is not a defunct point of view, and has done a damn good job predicting outcomes over the past few years.