Matt Miller (Ctr for American Progress): Obama a president or pawn?

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Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and co-host of public radio’s “Left, Right & Center,” writes a weekly column for The Post.
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Is Barack Obama a president or a pawn?

And is there any difference nowadays?

Seeing how narrow the boundaries of debate have become on the biggest issues facing the country makes the question unavoidable.

On the central near-term economic issue – jobs – Paul Krugman has trenchantly described the “learned helplessness” gripping the White House. As a result we hear only timid ideas that can’t make a real dent. Ditto on the long-term debt, where we’re asked to choose between a Republican plan that would add $5.4 trillion in red ink over the next decade and a Democratic plan that would add $7 trillion.

But the phenomenon goes far beyond jobs and debt. On the issues of bank capital and Afghanistan, both of which will be the targets of momentous decisions in the weeks ahead, the options being debated seem just as inexplicably narrow and out of touch.

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On Afghanistan the answer is easy but almost never discussed: We don’t have a draft. Does anyone doubt that if this war weren’t being fought by “other people’s children,” more aggressive plans to end it would be on the table? Instead, even post-Osama, the president remains boxed in by the slim range of options his military leaders present. Obama chafes at his choices, but he hasn’t truly challenged them (perhaps for fear of the fallout if top generals publicly balked).

(...)

A president’s power to shape events are more limited than we generally think. But a president’s power to shape the boundaries of debate are limited only by his imagination and by his appetite for political risk. From the looks of it, Barack Obama has plenty of imagination.

Full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2011/06/15/AGyiP7VH_singlePage.html