To this point, Obama has offered little more than generalized exhortations about the need to deal with the long-term problem of debt and deficits.

Dan Balz writes in the Washington Post:

In his first two years, President Obama pursued an agenda that dramatically increased government spending and ushered in the biggest change in social welfare policy since the Great Society. When he spoke to the country late Friday night, he sounded like a born-again budget cutter.

Americans may ask which is the real Obama, the politician who embraced the biggest stimulus package in the nation’s history, a bailout of the banks and a takeover of the automobile industry, or the one who on Friday hailed the new budget deal as including “the largest annual spending cut in our history.”

In the negotiations that ended late Friday, Obama remained largely above the fray.

Obama advisers reject any suggestion that the president has changed course or philosophy since the midterm shellacking.

To this point . . . the president has offered little more than generalized exhortations about the need to deal with the long-term problem of debt and deficits. To his credit, Ryan has gone much further, as did the president’s own debt and deficit commission.