Clinton still wasn’t out of the woods in the early summer of 1996 when he signed welfare reform, and that’s the problem Obama faces — he can’t just spend 20-plus months talking triangulation, sooner or later he’s got to actually get something passed that shows to the moderate swing voters he did learn a lesson from the 2010 election. Plus, what Clinton abandoned was LBJ’s creation; the main program Obama’s going to be asked to scuttle was the one he backed getting Pelosi and Reid to pass, so killing his own creation figures to be far tougher.

And even if he does show the nerve to do that, that in itself creates another problem, because Clinton was able to triangulate between the House and Senate GOP and the now-out-of-power far left Congressional Democrats, vetoing welfare reform twice before finally giving in, after he had created the idea that he was between Congress and those who wanted to keep the Great Society welfare system in place forever. Obama’s going to have to situate himself between the House GOP and the Senate Democrats on things like his own health care plan, and for the 23 Democrats in the Senate facing re-election, there’s the question of if they’re willing to play the bad guy and let Obama get to their right (if he even wants to).