Top Clinton Strategist Recycles Advice For Obama

President Obama must continue to move toward the political center in an effort to tackle the nation’s five biggest problems, says acclaimed pollster Mark Penn.

In an op-ed piece for the Washington Post, Penn advised Obama to build on his efforts to work with Republicans, and to put substance behind his recently developed “centrist outlook.”

“Having adopted a centrist outlook in his State of the Union address, President Obama needs to fill it out with big ideas that solve our major problems rather than let us keep kicking the can down the road,” Penn wrote.

Penn, who successfully advised President Clinton to gravitate toward the middle during his struggles with a Republican-controlled House in the mid-1990’s, wrote that reducing the nation’s rising deficit should be Obama’s top priority.

“The biggest issue facing the government is the $1.5 trillion deficit. No one has been able to find a real centrist solution since the Clinton budget deal,” Penn said. “Here, Obama has to aim for nothing less than a balanced budget in five years. The only way is to reach a compromise on Social Security, Medicare and defense spending, along with some cuts in current spending that the president would rather avoid.”

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