Barack Obama has been doing well recently. The public is beginning to experience the economic recovery. Job growth and consumer spending are up, a bit. Obama is shaping the political agenda on his own terms, with the full support of his party. At year’s end, he negotiated more resolutely with the Republican Congress, extending the payroll tax cut thus far for a couple of months, with every indication that it will be extended for a year. He has the political advantage on this, along with other legislative issues, as reported in The New York Times. He refused to be forced into making an abrupt decision in the Keystone XL oil pipeline. His Attorney General, Eric Holder, is challenging the legality of voter ID laws in the old confederacy. His job approval rating is up, as the Republican’s in Congress approval is down.

I think that the improvement in Obama’s standing is related to the change in the public debate, away from the obsession with deficits and cutting, toward jobs, inequality and social justice. This is not only a matter of changed tactics, but of a transformed political environment. Obama can thank Occupy Wall Street for making this possible. It’s an OWS not a Tea Party environment now. But it’s not just a matter of the environment. Obama also has contributed in a significant way. He made these issues his own in his Osawatomie, Kansas speech. I agree with David Howell, it was one of his best. He again revealed his capacity as story-teller-in-chief.

Howell liked the speech because it spoke to a pressing problem and its sociological consequence and political cause: “the massive and continued growth in inequality, linking this to the collapse of the middle class and to the obstructionism of the Republican-controlled Congress.”

I liked it especially because Obama continued to cogently tell our story, describing the path of the country, both in the short and the long run. He explained his approach in his first term and suggested where he is going. He showed how his policy positions fit into a long and deep American story. He went to Osawatomie, the site of an historic speech by Teddy Roosevelt. The former Republican President spoke about the problems of progress and social justice in the shadow of the industrial revolution. Obama addressed the same problems in the shadows of the post-industrial electronic revolution. Then and now the meaning of America was at stake. The power of Obama’s speech was its historic richness, tied to the everyday experience. Inequality, social justice and the progress of the Republic and its citizens, Obama revealed, are at stake. He did this in an understated way. It was a grand speech, without being grandiose (the contrast to Newt Gingrich comes to mind). Consider some highlights and also take a look at the speech as it was delivered (also embedded below).

Obama recognized that for many the American Dream seems to be fading. He points to broad disappointment and dismay.

“For most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefited from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and their investments — wealthier than ever before. But everybody else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t — and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up.

Now, for many years, credit cards and home equity loans papered over this harsh reality. But in 2008, the house of cards collapsed.”

This was the condition of the country when Obama became president. And since:

“[T]here’s been a raging debate over the best way to restore growth and prosperity, restore balance, restore fairness. Throughout the country, it’s sparked protests and political movements — from the tea party to the people who’ve been occupying the streets of New York and other cities. It’s left Washington in a near-constant state of gridlock. It’s been the topic of heated and sometimes colorful discussion among the men and women running for president. (Laughter.)

But, Osawatomie, this is not just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.”

He then linked this debate to an earlier one, at another time of economic transformation and growing inequality.

“[I]n 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here to Osawatomie and he laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism.”

Roosevelt was concerned with the inordinate power of the captains of industry and the gross inequality that resulted when that power was left unchecked. Obama drew the comparison.

“Today, over 100 years later, our economy has gone through another transformation. Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and it’s made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere they want in the world. And many of you know firsthand the painful disruptions this has caused for a lot of Americans.”

Obama accepted that the primary concerns of his opposition, deficits and debts, had to be addressed:

“But in order to structurally close the deficit, get our fiscal house in order, we have to decide what our priorities are. Now, most immediately, short term, we need to extend a payroll tax cut that’s set to expire at the end of this month. (Applause.) If we don’t do that, 160 million Americans, including most of the people here, will see their taxes go up by an average of $1,000 starting in January and it would badly weaken our recovery. That’s the short term.

In the long term, we have to rethink our tax system more fundamentally. We have to ask ourselves: Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education and research and high-tech manufacturing — all those things that helped make us an economic superpower? Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country? Because we can’t afford to do both. That is not politics. That’s just math.” (Laughter and applause.)

Obama is calling for a sharing of responsibility and prosperity as an American heritage. He went to Osawatomie because this was also the theme of Roosevelt, the great Republican President. Obama approvingly quoting the Republican hero:  “ ‘We are all Americans,’ Teddy Roosevelt told them that day. ‘Our common interests are as broad as the continent.’ ” Obama then identifies our project with the Republican’s:

“And well into our third century as a nation, we have grown and we’ve changed in many ways since Roosevelt’s time. The world is faster and the playing field is larger and the challenges are more complex. But what hasn’t changed — what can never change — are the values that got us this far. We still have a stake in each other’s success. We still believe that this should be a place where you can make it if you try. And we still believe, in the words of the man who called for a New Nationalism all those years ago, ‘The fundamental rule of our national life,’ he said, ‘the rule which underlies all others — is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.’ And I believe America is on the way up.”

Obama’s speech was well received. It is notable that he openly addressed the issue of social justice, addressing inequality as being the primary problem of our time. He is attempting to redefine the politics of the moment, building upon social ferment and discontent, most dramatically expressed by Occupy Wall Street, but quite evident in the labor struggles that started in Madison, Wisconsin last year, as we have observed here.

The President’s Republican opponents are appalled by his newly intensified commitment to class warfare. Many on the left are heartened by his change in direction, though skeptics are waiting to see if this is for real from a President that they think has been too closely connected to Wall Street and corporate wealth. I see the constant centrist, adopting new tactics appropriate to a changed political environment, a centrist trying to move the center left, now focused on the movement because it is again a real possibility.

Amy Stuart in her reply to my response to President Obama’s speech on the deficit pointed out the need to clarify what the political left, right and center mean. I think she’s right. The terms have been used loosely and quite imprecisely. But on the other hand, their continued use suggests that there may be good reasons for the continued use of the schema.

I, myself, became convinced, after the fall of the Soviet Union, that the terms left and right were obsolete.  I thought (it turns out incorrectly) that since it was becoming clear to just about everyone that there was no systemic alternative to capitalism, to the modern market economy, and since there really were simply alternative capitalisms, that we might best abandon the terms. Then we would pragmatically address the practical problems of the day, and express, identify and pursue various specific political commitments, e.g. individual freedom and social justice, and not put them in the large baskets of the left and the right. I thought that the terms hid more than they revealed, that it was too hard to find and consider specific commitments in these very large bins.

Yet, given the systematic polarization of our political world, I am convinced that I was wrong. These old categories still have life, helping illuminate distinctions and commonalities in the political landscape. And there is an additional benefit as it applies to the present American scene. The distinction between left, right and center provides a way to understand the creative political action of Barack Obama, who in this regard is a leader.

The notion of the political left and right has a history, dating back to the French Revolution: Monarchists, right; revolutionaries, left. It was used to understand the Manichean battles of the Twentieth Century: Communists and their sympathizers, left; Fascists and their sympathizers, right. And it also has been used to understand ordinary domestic politics: Republicans, right; Democrats, left, very conservative Republicans, far right, very progressive Democrats, far left (though I think this is a small group at best).

The notion of center is less sharp. Vaguely, it means in between left and right, but I think it can be more than this. It’s not only in between, but also what happens in between, in a meeting ground. In the sense of reading Elzbieta Matynia’s reading of bridges with kapias, it is a principled commitment to kapias. Obama is a centrist of this sort, and I don’t think he can be understood without keeping this in mind.

American rightists believe in the market. They follow Reagan. Government is the problem. American leftists believe in the power of the state. They follow Roosevelt and his descendants: government is a primary means to establish a sound economy and social justice. Centrists are agnostics, believing neither in the government nor in the market, pragmatically committed to one or to the other on instrumental grounds, whether or not they work to achieve given goals. Center-right then includes those who tend to think that on controversial issues the market is likely to work to the exclusion of the government, center-left tends to think that the government can play a significant role. Obama then on pragmatic grounds is center-left.

But he is, more creatively, primarily a principled centrist. He is not just in between, leaning left (or leaning right according to his leftist critics). He wants people with different convictions to come together, discuss their differences, find a way to agree to some common position and act on it. His desire for open debate and open negotiations is not instrumental. It is a fundamental commitment, very difficult to execute in these polarized times. He is more than willing to compromise on practical matters. He judges that on the grounds of social justice and pragmatic economic performance Republican policies advantage the rich, do not adequately address the needs of the middle class (this is the political mantra), but crucially the needs of the poor and disadvantaged. The state is needed for this. The market doesn’t do the trick. But he seeks engagement with his opponents.

His project, which I fully support, is to move the center left. I am torn between the judgment that he is sometimes not tough enough in executing this project, and an appreciation that he balances the most desirable with the possible and succeeds in the long run. I am not sure.

But I am sure that in order to make sense of Obama as a political leader, it is absolutely necessary to understand his principled commitment to the creative center, which is, as he puts it, not in the blue (on the left) states or the red (on the right) states, but in the United States, in the center.