Yesterday, Commonweal posted my next column, "The Obama Gamble: Is Accommodation a Winning Hand" on-line. In it I try to figure out why the president isn't stepping up and rhetorically, if not in other ways, describing the dilemma he and we are in until jobs come back, and what the government needs to do to bring jobs back. The column focused on who Obama is and where he comes from.Today, Robert Reich points out a more immediate problem with the White House:"...rather than fight for a bold jobs plan, the White House has apparently decided it's politically wiser to continue fighting about the deficit. The idea is to keep the public focused on the deficit drama - to convince them their current economic woes have something to do with it, decry Washington's paralysis over fixing it, and then claim victory over whatever outcome emerges from the process recently negotiated to fix it. They hope all this will distract the public's attention from the President's failure to do anything about continuing high unemployment and economic anemia."Pretty discouraging--if True!

Margaret O’Brien Steinfels is a former editor of Commonweal. 

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