A blog post published last week on Naked Capitalism raises an interesting question – what exactly is the Roosevelt legacy? For us at the Roosevelt Institute, we believe it is based in engaging in dialogue and promoting progressive people and ideas. It is also about encouraging young people to get involved in public service and public policy debates.

President Obama seems remarkably proud of himself for the many “concessions” he won from Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as part of their deal to extend all the Bush tax cuts for two years. Yet, it seems almost all of the “concessions” Obama claims to have won were ideas actually promoted by Republicans. The amount of money allocated for things Obama wanted that didn’t have bipartisan support is much smaller.

President Obama, in an attempt to sell the deal he cut on extending the Bush tax cuts, keeps holding up the one-year payroll tax holiday as his big win. Defenders of the deal, such as Ezra Klein, act like without this deal, there would be no way Obama could have gotten this payroll tax holiday. I think this is an inherent misunderstanding of the Republican position. Since well before this deal, I thought a payroll tax holiday was going to be one of the few big bipartisan things Obama and John Boehner would agree to. I have zero reason to believe Obama couldn’t have gotten the payroll holiday later as a stand-alone bill, completely separate major concessions to the GOP.

Two weeks ago, our CentCom commander took a break from meeting with Wali Kharzai to accept the annual Irving Kristol Award at a dinner hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.