That is the reality that confronts President Obama today. His hands are tied while Egypt erupts.

At first he expressed support and sympathy for the democratic forces filling the streets and appreciation for the Egyptian military holding fire. But when it became clear that Mubarak was on his way out, sooner or later, it dawned on everyone that the Muslim Brotherhood might seize on the resulting power vacuum and chaos to erect a hostile regime on the banks of the Suez Canal.

Whom do you root for in a situation like this?

It actually hasn't "dawned on everyone" that the Muslim Brotherhood will "erect a hostile regime" in Egypt. Even a casual observer of the uprising in Egypt would likely encounter commentary and analysis that debunks the argument that the Muslim Brotherhood is about to turn Egypt into Iran.

Broder's contribution to the discussion is in line with that of other establishment pundits who express alarm at the prospect of Egyptian democracy.

There are several reasons this is nonsense--Clinton was more or less the original DLC "New Democrat," so he was consciously and conspicuously to the right of the party base all along. The press wanted to nudge him even further to the right. The idea that Obama should finally break with the left is equally nonsensical, since he's been happy to cross the base for two years.

It's telling that some of the strongest support for Obama's tax compromise has come from right-wing columnists and Guardians of the Political Center like David Broder. Broder's Post colleague Dana Milbank joined that crowd over the weekend, writing (12/12/10):

For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of President Obama.

I'm not particularly proud of the tax-cut deal he and the Republicans negotiated. But I'm proud that he has finally stood firm against the likes of Peter DeFazio.

It's not the policy, then--it's the fact that Obama stood up to a "hard-core liberal." Apparently Obama has been letting such Democrats control his policy decisions so far, "to his peril over the past two years." This was what doomed the healthcare debate, according to Milbank--Obama let liberals waste time supporting the public option. Paul Krugman responds:

The debate over the public option wasn't what slowed the legislation. What did it was the many months Obama waited while Max Baucus tried to get bipartisan support, only to see the Republicans keep moving the goalposts; only when the White House finally concluded that Republican "moderates" weren't negotiating in good faith did the thing finally get moving.

So look at how the Village constructs its mythology. The real story, of pretend moderates stalling action by pretending to be persuadable, has been rewritten as a story of how those DF hippies got in the way, until the centrists saved the day.

That media mythology is deep. This weekend, NBC Meet the Press anchor David Gregory wondered:

You know, Harold, the question was, was this a Sister Souljah moment, to go back to the Clinton era, for President Obama, standing up to the base?

Clinton's "Sister Souljah moment" came before he was even president--a poor example of a chastened president moving to the "middle."  But that timeline is mostly forgotten--as are Clinton's other moves to the right, many of which came before the 1994 midterms.

Even stories that try to knock down the Clinton/Obama comparison-- like Peter Baker's Week in Review article in the New York Times (12/12/10)--wind up having to play along with the storyline. As Baker noted about Clinton's surprise appearance at a White House press conference:

Equally riveting and astonishing, Mr. Clinton's blast-from-the-past performance in the White House briefing room on Friday afternoon reinforced the impression of political déjà vu, the sense that once again a Democratic president humbled by midterm elections was pivoting to the center at the expense of his own supporters.

Baker goes on to explain why the comparison misses the mark, but it's telling that this history lesson is the exception in the media and not the rule. Apparently there is something irresistible about moving Democrats even further to the right.

Washington Post columnist and "dean" of the Beltway press corps David Broder was one of the few people (not counting Republicans) who stood up to applaud Barack Obama's tax deal. Under the I-am-not-making-this-up headline "Centrist on the Rise," Broder (12/9/10) congratulated Obama, who has "separated himself from the left of his own party and staked a strong claim to the territory where national elections are fought and won: the independent center."

Obama has "begun to regain focus as the pragmatic liberal that he is--not the hard-line socialist Republicans make him out to be but a president far more practical and down to earth than his critics on the liberal flank of the Democratic Party. "

Reclaiming  the "center," of course, mostly means trouncing your base--and that's what Broder is cheering:

When their constituents see the fatter paychecks, Democratic members of Congress will have a hard time sustaining their carping about the lost opportunity to engage the GOP in an old-fashioned campaign against the fat cats.

Obama's move "wasn't a Sister Souljah moment," Broder warns, but this move to the right  has given Obama a chance "to define himself, more clearly than ever before, as a raging moderate." His conclusion: "This was the best showing for Obama in many months."

But wait a second. How exactly does a deficit hawk like Broder--who recently called for a drastic, British-style austerity program (FAIR Blog, 10/25/10)--reconcile Obama's base-bashing tax cuts with the hundreds of billions it will add to the federal debt? Apparently bashing liberals is a higher short-term priority; in the long-term, this will all somehow make slashing government spending easier:

Also, the $900 billion this deal will add to the national debt increases the pressure on Obama and Congress to undertake the kind of tough-love budgetary changes outlined by the presidential commission on deficits.

So the rich get tax cuts now, and the rest of us get "tough love" for the foreseeable future. That's "centrism," David Broder-style.

In his Washington Post column today ("Dodgeball for Democrats," 11/18/10), David Broder leads off with this:

When the rules of the House of Representatives forced the Democrats to confront a painful choice among their leaders, they did what Democrats are often inclined to do. They changed the rules.

Usually, such a stunt would matter only to the members affected by the change. But this one sends a dangerous signal at a crucial moment, when both parties are being tested on their willingness to respond to the lessons of the last election. This is a disquieting development.

Egad! What was this disquieting stunt that the rule-breaking Democrats pulled off? As Broder explains, losing the Congressional majority normally means losing one leadership position (majority leader); so the party would have a minority leader, a whip and a chair. But since Pelosi is staying on to serve as minority leader, the Democrats have four leaders for three positions. So Pelosi created a position called "assistant leader" in order to keep veteran African-American lawmaker James Clyburn in a leadership role.

I know, I am as outraged as you by this "dangerous" rule-breaking. Funny thing is, a few days prior something very similar was  happening on the Republican side. The new Republican majority, facing leadership challenges from Tea Party-backed lawmakers,  created two new positions for incoming freshmen.

Does any of this actually matter much? Not to most people. But David Broder isn't most people; while he acknowledges that this wouldn't make a difference in normal times, these are certainly not normal times:

But we are about to start a Congress in which everything depends on the willingness of the leadership in both parties to face up to hard choices--on the budget, Afghanistan and a dozen other issues.

Too often in the past, Democrats have avoided making hard choices by throwing more money in the pot or taking similar self-indulgent steps. When it came to the stimulus legislation and health-care reform, for example, Democrats spent to buy votes rather than make tough choices.

The Democrats' unwillingness to face the hard choice in this internal fight sends exactly the wrong signal.

You see, it's not really about what James Clyburn's job title is at all. Democrats are "self-indulgent" money-wasters who "buy votes"--though the examples Broder cites (health care and stimulus) were instances where the party, in an effort to attract Republican and/or Blue Dog support, trimmed their sails, winding up with a stimulus package many thought was too small and a healthcare plan that lacked a public option or a serious effort to control drug costs.

It's too bad the Democrats aren't ready to be serious. I mean, they're not even willing (yet) to follow Broder's advice and start bombing Iran.