Middle March

In the wake of Wednesday's speech, while moderately conservative Obama fan David Brooks doesn't entirely like the health care reform proposal, he thinks that Obama has helped himself by tilting to the supposedly revenue-neutral Senate bill and nodding to malpractice reform. He invokes the magic of the middle:

Best of all for those of us who admire the political craft was the speech’s seductive nature and careful ambiguity. Obama threw out enough rhetorical chum to keep the liberals happy, yet he subtly staked out ground in the center on nearly every substantive issue in order to win over the moderates needed to get anything passed.