This is going to be interesting…
President Obama left town and promptly got backed into the deepest corner of his still-young political life here. He now — finally, unavoidably — has some irreconcilable choices to make. How he makes them will define the rest of his term, his chances in 2012 and even the ultimate meaning of his presidency.
Although the Tea Party views the president as an incorrigible leftist, the fact is that Obama sold much of his agenda on the theory that activism in government could in fact save money. He also accepted much of the Reagan orthodoxy on tax cuts, or at least accepted the political reality of their popularity.
But now numbers — fiscal and political — are inescapably forcing him to choose. You simply cannot extend all of the Bush-era tax cuts, fight one and a half wars abroad and a security war at home, and hold Social Security, Medicare and other educational and health programs together and more or less unharmed
Lost in the 21st Century 