? when even a by-the-numbers liberal columnist such as Newsweek?s Jacob Weisberg (who calls conservatives ?hysterical? in his latest work) takes President Obama to task for failing to recognize the danger of government excess:
Obama says the issue isn’t how big government is but whether it works. But how big it is matters, too. A government that constitutes half of a country’s economy, like those in Western Europe, produces a very different society over time from one that eats up only a third of the economy. Obama may have assumed that the imperative for a strong response to the financial crisis would suspend suspicion of Washington. If so, he misjudged American political culture. Even now, after fear of excessive public-sector growth has provoked an agenda-stalling backlash, Obama has yet to clarify his vague view of government?s role.
How might a Democratic president go about establishing himself as a limited-government liberal? As a younger, more idealistic journalist, I wrote a book trying to square my belief in federal activism with commitment to limited government. In the 15 years since, my advice hasn’t much changed (or been taken). New Democrats and Blue Dogs aside, the party’s congressional leadership has never really recognized that the problem of government excess and failure is grounded in reality as well as in the other side’s distortions and misperceptions.
