Sorry, this is not much of a diary, but I thought you'd enjoy this analysis by the (center right) Washington editor of the Financial Times, Clive Crook:
The budget reveals the liberal Obama
... this budget reveals Mr Obama with new clarity. He is no Tony Blair, ideologically rootless, as I had previously suspected. He is a conviction politician: a bold progressive liberal. Yet his outreach to Republicans is no sham; his civility, I think, is not a front. He respects people who disagree with him, is capable of liking them, and is always willing to listen – but then stays true to his beliefs. This is a rare and devastating combination.
For years in the US, the Democratic left, despite a surfeit of brilliant minds, has neutered itself with its own rage. The fixed expression of progressive liberalism has been anger and contempt – with perplexity at its lack of political success mixed in for comic effect. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Amid an economic crisis, with capitalism under fire and the country looking to government for answers, the liberal left finally has a leader with brains, who shares its convictions, yet is as friendly and as likeable to the politically uncommitted as anyone could wish – so appealing, in fact, that the party nearly chose somebody else to lead it.
Whether Mr Obama will be good for the country remains to be seen. We can already be sure that he is conservatism’s worst nightmare.
The overall thrust of the article is that "liberals never had it so good" (which possibly forgets the financial and economic crisis we're in) and his tactical advice to Obama is to "keep the left unhappy," because having the left happy can only be a signal that terrible things are being done, so his compliments to Obama are all the more meaningful.