The Two Obamas

In "The Audacity of Hope," Obama deftly describes the unpleasant budgetary picture and its consequences. "We will probably have to postpone some investments that we know are needed . . . and we will have to prioritize the help that we give to struggling American families," he wrote.

Where's the prioritizing in an $80 billion-plus tax cut, on top of a $50 billion to $65 billion health-care plan? To put this in perspective, John Kerry's proposed tax cuts were the same size as Obama's -- over 10 years, not one.

Obama, to be fair, has had his mini-moments. At the National Education Association, in the midst of a speech as fiery as his address to the SEIU, he mentioned the dread subject of merit pay for teachers. In Detroit, he proposed higher fuel-efficiency standards for automakers.

The day before his SEIU speech, Obama was on Wall Street to talk about the need for "shared sacrifice" -- though he waited for the Brookings crowd to talk about the specific sacrifices of raising capital gains rates and eliminating the "carried interest" loophole for hedge fund managers and venture capitalists.

The question about Obama is not "where's the beef," Mondale's famous putdown of Gary Hart's "new ideas." It's: Where's the audacity?

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