Obama and the Expansion of Possibility

Ask not whether government is too big or too small but whether it works.

Ask not whether the free market is a force for good or ill but whether its bounty is adequately shared.

Ask not whether the next generation will be better off than the last but whether we can throw off the shackles of stale partisanship, worn-out dogmas and narrow self-interest to do what everyone knows we must.

Such was the economic manifesto delivered by a confident new president on a cold, crisp day in January before a flag-waving throng and a country whose faith in both markets and government has been badly shaken.

It was a distillation of the message Barack Obama has been delivering since he crashed into the national consciousness with his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The reason we keep getting the wrong answers, he says, is that we keep asking the wrong questions, talking about them with the wrong language and limiting ourselves with false choices. In solving our problems, the essential first step is to redefine them. Only then will it be possible to take the final step of hammering out the grand bargains that have always been within sight but never within reach.

How will we know if and when Obama has succeeded in reshaping the terms of the economic debate?

We'll know when AARP announces that it is willing to accept a gradual increase in the retirement age as part of a comprehensive reform of Social Security.

We'll know when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agrees to increase taxes and tariffs to support an expanded program of income support, health insurance and retraining programs for displaced workers, and in response organized labor lifts its opposition to all trade treaties.

We'll know when a big-city teachers union trades tenure for higher pay and performance bonuses.

We'll know when big drug companies accept a cost-benefit test for drug prices as a condition for universal coverage.

We'll know when enough corporate tax loopholes are closed to lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent.

We'll know when farmers agree to give up price supports and "emergency" drought relief for a simplified program of government-subsidized crop insurance.