...Barack Obama had barely won the presidential election when right-wing critics fumed that he would govern from the "ideological left."
But left-wing critics wrung their hands over Obama's call for unity, saying it would compromise his mandate for change.
...
"It's what I call `yo-yo economics,'" says Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute, an adviser to the Obama campaign. "It means `you're on your own.' But Obama has shown that the notion that government is always bad and private-sector markets are always good has been deeply disproved at great cost."
"But whether his plans will lead to radical change, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Depression-era New Deal is still unclear.
That's unsettling to those who demand far-reaching political and economic change.
"Progressives hope that the Obama administration, like the New Deal, will respond to the current economic and financial crisis by creating institutions, especially a universal health-care system, that will change the shape of American society for generations to come," says economist Paul Krugman, in a recent New York Times column.
He warned Obama should resist the error Roosevelt made in cutting back his spending plans after his 1936 election victory, eroding gains created by his early bold plans.
http://www.thestar.com/News/USElection/article/537535
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