It is a carbon copy -- change "off shore drilling" for "welfare reform" and it is 1995 all over again.

The difference is Clinton employed Triangulation after he faced Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

Obama has been doing it virtually since day one. Obama has fully embraced the Republican agenda of 2008 - tax cuts for economic recovery, no rights for accused terrorists, tax employer health care plans (albeit in 2018), and now 'drill, baby, drill'.

But even there, the Administration has had reasonable success pushing back on the Miranda nonsense and, because they effectively occupy the tough, pragmatic middle ground, they routinely get cover from non-crazy Republican national security voices, which has helped blunt the force of these issues. (I understand that the term "middle ground" is very slippery and dangerous here, but I basically use it to mean policies that, before the great crazy of 2009 had broad consensus support from large portions of both parties and the Broder/Friedman/Brooks axis.) [strong]

For a Democratic president, this is a pretty gutsy move to open the public debate about an energy bill. Or, well, maybe it's not: it's high-reward, low-risk; environmentalists will complain, but then again, environmentalists complain.  Aside from the substance, which is beyond our ken, the politics of this move is easy: with one fell swoop, Obama deprives Republicans of the major talking point they'd use to object to more expansive government-based climate remediation and energy prospecting policy.

Substitute welfare reform in there, and what do you get?

He is doing it again- give the oil companies/repugs  everything they want even before you sit down at the table and then when they bargain with you you have nothing else they want so they get a bill that (see healthcare bill) .

I HATE welfare. To be more precise, I hate the welfare system we had until last August, when Bill Clinton signed a historic bill ending "welfare as we know it." It was a system that contributed to chronic dependency among large numbers of people who would be the first to say they would rather have a job than collect a welfare check every month -- and its benefits were never enough to lift people out of poverty.

Many of those who are Obama sycophants now point to welfare reform as the worst of the Clinton triangulation maneuvers but absolutely refuse to acknowledge this could have been more than a simple political maneuver by Clinton.

A couple more things need to be mentioned about welfare reform.  One of Edelman's main criticisms of the welfare system before reform was that welfare did not lift people out of poverty.  A scant two years after Edelman resigned in protest, a government study showed that Clinton's other policies, mostly the Earned Income Tax Credit, had helped lift 27 million people out of poverty. (link)  Where is the acknowledgement that whatever evils were inherent in Welfare Reform were balanced by other more positive Clinton actions?  Crickets on that one.

Barack Obama has a majority, nearly a supermajority.

Bill Clinton compromised.  Barack Obama precompromised.