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Compromise or compromised? There are good and bad meanings to the word “compromise.” One is to come to agreement through mutual concessions; the other is to undermine one’s integrity by caving in to opposition. On the tax-cut deal now before the Congress, did President Obama engineer a classic compromise that gives each side an equal balance of things wanted and unwanted; or did he compromise himself, surrendering his principles for things he should have had anyway with more guts and better timing? Compromise of principle is on the minds of both the left and the right. Many liberal Democrats are appalled that their president blinked in the stare-down with Republicans over extending the Bush tax cut for those making over $250,000 a year — another campaign promise come a-cropping. Republicans are delighted that what they said was absolutely non-negotiable was taken by the president as absolutely non-negotiable — a sign that if they keep saying “no” long enough and loud enough, he’ll fold every time. Some observers, however, do not perceive weakness but shrewdness in Obama’s tax-cut proposal. David Brooks of The New York Times lauds the president for “returning to first principles”…
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