Inside Politics

RADIO COALITION

A group called the Free Radio Coalition has been formed to fight the possible reimposition of the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” Radio America President James Roberts said Tuesday.

Chairing the coalition will be veteran broadcaster, Radio America talk-show host and former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock.

“The reinstatement of the misnamed Fairness Doctrine would constitute a massive assault on our cherished First Amendment rights and should be of concern to all Americans, regardless of their political or religious persuasion,” Mr. Hedgecock said.

The group hopes to hold a summit conference of radio talk-show hosts and religious broadcasters in Washington to plan a coordinated strategy.

The organization also plans to organize expert testimony in the event that the Federal Communications Commission or congressional committees hold hearings on the Fairness Doctrine.

Mr. Roberts and others interested in the issue, including radio talk-show hosts G. Gordon Liddy and Blanquita Cullum, will hold a reception Wednesday evening for Mr. Hedgecock in Washington.

LEFT AND CENTER

“President Barack Obama is taking a beating from liberal critics who think his attempt to court Republican support is a political failure and a policy disaster. Yet this assault on Mr. Obama’s bipartisan instinct is misguided and, ironically, threatens to undermine liberal goals,” Matt Miller writes in the Wall Street Journal.

“The president has his eye on a bigger prize than winning a few Republican votes for his stimulus package or having a conservative in his Cabinet. He aims to move the political center in America to the left, much as Ronald Reagan moved it to the right. The only way he can achieve this goal is to harness the energies and values of both parties,” said Mr. Miller, author of “The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of The Old Ways of Thinking To Unleash a New Prosperity.”

“Left and right mean less nowadays, especially to Americans outside Washington. But broadly speaking, Mr. Obama seeks to use government in new ways to bolster opportunity and security in an era when financial crisis, global competition and rapid technological change are calling into question the political and business arrangements on which our prosperity has rested for decades. This is the task that history has assigned this president. The spat between him and his liberal critics is about the way one makes this happen.”

Mr. Miller added: “Liberals who mock Mr. Obama’s Republican flirtations fail to appreciate that his bipartisanship is an effort to play for bigger stakes. He’s daring to link a political strategy to an attempt to actually solve America’s major policy challenges.”

THE GAP

“Readers of this column know that I am a great admirer of Barack Obama and those around him. And yet the gap between my epistemological modesty and their liberal worldviews has been evident over the past few weeks,” New York Times columnist David Brooks writes.

“The people in the administration are surrounded by a galaxy of unknowns, and yet they see this economic crisis as an opportunity to expand their reach, to take bigger risks and, as Obama said on Saturday, to tackle every major problem at once.

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