PRESIDENT OBAMA entered office promising to be a different kind of politician – one who would speak honestly with the American people about the hard choices they face and would help make those hard calls. Tuesday night’s State of the Union Address would have been the moment to make good on that promise. He disappointed. […]
 
In his first year in office, Mr. Obama said he couldn’t confront the nation’s long-term fiscal peril because of imminent financial collapse. In his second year, he said he needed health-care reform first, to “bend the curve” of rising health-care costs. He called for a bipartisan commission to study the debt and promised to pivot in his third year to fiscal reform.
Now that bipartisan commission has reported, but Mr. Obama didn’t fully endorse any of its recommendations. To the contrary, he promised more jobs for teachers and construction workers. He warned against “slashing” Social Security benefits. Corporate tax reform is fine, but if it’s revenue-neutral, it only postpones – and makes more politically difficult – the task of narrowing the nation’s deficit.
So what happens now? Maybe some members of Congress will display the courage the president has lacked. Maybe Mr. Obama, in the budget he proposes next month, will grapple more realistically with the hard choices than he did Tuesday night. But even if he does, how can he expect public support if he hasn’t made the case? From the man who promised to change Washington, it seemed all too drearily familiar.