How can that be? How did a president who clearly understands climate change, supports serious efforts to reduce pollution, and respects our scientific institutions come to be as ineffective as his predecessor, who did none of the above? In a word, he compromised. Again and again. Pundits can't get enough of this evaluation of the Obama presidency, largely because it's true: Obama is hell-bent on being seen as a great compromiser who can bridge the political divide with his unparalleled reasonableness. Republicans have responded to his proverbial fig leaf by refusing to compromise on anything (see: the debt ceiling debacle, health care reform, anything), in order to make him look foolish and ineffective.

When Republicans refused to vote to extend the debt ceiling unless they got deep federal spending cuts, Obama and the Democrats caved. When industry complained that the proposed EPA rules designed to rein in dangerous ozone pollution were too strict, Obama caved. And so on and so forth. Evidently, this propensity for caving, er, compromising, pertains not just to big federal battles, but the more mundane ones as well. When a lobbyist for the oil company shows up at OIRA's door and complains that a new pollution rule will hurt business, it turns out that more likely than not, he'll at least partially get his way -- and public health and the environment suffer as a result.

Obama's "compromise" principle follows a consistent pattern. His opening bid is to move more than halfway in the direction of Republican principles. When Republicans refuse to consider Obama's compromise proposals and take the economy hostage, Obama unilaterally offers up further compromises without getting anything back in return, which only encourages further Republican intransigence.

• When Obama first appointed his economic team, he did not appoint "a team of rivals" but a "team of Rubins," drawing all of his principal economic advisors from Wall Street's allies like Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Peter Orzag and Rahm Emanuel, rather than including some advisors with progressive views similar to those of Joe Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, or James Galbraith.

• Although Obama was advised that in order to bring unemployment under control, a stimulus package in the order of $1.2 trillion was needed, Obama's opening bid was on the order of $700 billion dollars. He then negotiated a package that was made up nearly half of unstimulative tax cuts. Rather than reducing the unemployment rate below 8% as Obama administration officials promised, unemployment is now 9.2% as the stimulus is coming to an end. This alone could lead to Obama's defeat in 2012.

• Rather than proposing Medicare For All, and then perhaps compromising on a health care reform package with a strong public option, Obama began with a health care plan modeled on Republican proposals originally set out by Bob Dole and implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, then made backroom deals to give away the public option and to ban Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices.

• A few weeks before the BP oil spill, Obama proposed expanding offshore drilling in the hopes of gaining Republican support for the previously Republican idea of cap and trade. He gained no Republican support and a few weeks later, BP began gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, with no Republican support for the Republican-originated cap and trade concept, it died a quiet death in the Senate.

• Rather than demanding that the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans expire at the end of 2010, Obama began his negotiations with Republicans by offering to extend the Bush tax cuts on everyone. Instead, he could have demanded the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans expire, and if Republicans failed to vote for this and allowed all the tax cuts to expire, gone to the American people and forced the Republicans to renew only the middle class tax cuts in the lame duck session.

• Obama's negotiations on the debt ceiling with Republican hostage-takers who threaten to blow up the economy if they don't get their way has been the most egregious of all. He offered up a plan made up of 75% spending cuts to 25% "revenue increases" (God forbid, not tax increases). When Republicans remained intransigent, he offered a plan with less than 10% revenue increases. Now he seems prepared to back a plan with all cuts and no guaranteed revenue increases, while cutting social security and Medicare. Moreover, he has adopted Republican talking points that reducing the deficit -- not growing jobs -- is the key to improving the economy.

One even begins to wonder if Obama doesn't view these points as "compromises" but actually has come to believe they represent the best policy. Has Obama now become captive to the conservative Washington consensus that the key to fixing the economy is austerity?

Obama's compromises fail the test. They don't move closer to implementing the Democratic principles that he should stand for. And they give away far too much, and fall far short of being the best compromises possible.