Watch What I Say, Not What I Do

John Dickerson speaks the unspeakable in explaining why Obama doesn't stop Congress from spending like drunken sailors--he can't:

In another universe—say, the one Obama inhabited rhetorically last week—the pork contained in the bill might have been eliminated and turned into "savings." Obama's budget writers have done backbends to create savings, and cutting these earmarks would have been a way to take the high ground and resort to fewer gimmicks. And Obama, who has repeatedly called on us all to do hard things, might have taken on this hard task as a way of leading by example. Or, having run on changing Washington, the president might have decided to make changes to a bill that represents a lot of what he ran against.
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Of course in that universe we'd also get Fridays off, books would be published on merit and the stock market would rise if we asked nicely. The reason Obama isn't going to veto the spending bill is that, despite his popularity, he is not a magician, as Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel described so colorfully in discussing the stimulus bill with the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza. Undoing the bill's many pet projects would create a bloodbath, angering both Republicans and Democrats over what is, relative to his other requests, a small amount of savings ($16 billion if you remove the earmarks from the bill). Obama's efforts to prop up the deteriorating economy and transform energy and health-care policy will require a lot of political capital; he'd be crazy to squander it this early. So despite what Obama aides say, this supine posture is not about the past but about the future.

It would be great if Obama or his aides would say that out loud. Then they would be treating us all like adults, as Obama promised to. But that would also create political headaches: it's hard for a president who uses the language of moral absolutes to embrace relativity. Also, as a political matter, the public trusts the president to get them out of this fix, and according to polls, it doesn't trust his critics—so he's not likely to pay a penalty for not vetoing this spending bill.