They would hew to the painless, popular, focus-group-tested parts of conservatism and keep mum on the parts that would require sacrifices from the public.
Declaring that the bad news from Wall Street will require sacrifices from every New Yorker, Mr. Bloomberg said that to save about $250 million, he wants to eliminate the popular $400 property tax rebate checks that usually reach city homeowners in October.
In a statement released last night, Paul Whiteford, a United captain who is chairman of the union's executive committee, called the package "a painful decision that will require sacrifices from all United pilots".
"I refused to let that happen so we came up with a third way," Mr. Obama said, and officials forced the firms and unions in exchange for $60 billion to overhaul their operations and to require sacrifices from all parties.
Channeling more funds to schools in poorer communities would, however, require sacrifices from the segments of society that our "populist" president really represents.
If the energy crisis truly requires sacrifice from individuals, it is fair to ask what contribution to the common good, rather than to their own bank balances, is being made by those developers, landowners and lawyers who will grow rich from it.
From Barack Obama on down, I don't see the same thing happening on the Democratic side; instead, I see a party that's still loath to acknowledge that its program requires sacrifice from anyone save the wealthy, and that just responded to a moment of maximum leverage by narrowing its definition of who constitutes the rich.
As candidate and President Obama has made clear, change we need requires sacrifice from all of us.
"Our plan required sacrifices from everybody, including the family," Mr. Mulally said.
