Obama has, Andrew Sullivan notes, been talking Jesus, and he (Sullivan) concludes that:

What Obama might represent is a twist on Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” That label was always a way to disguise well-meaning big government liberalism. Obama, unlike Bush, need not pretend otherwise. He can raise taxes on the successful as a Biblical injunction. He can increase even further the reach of the welfare state because Jesus is calling him to. It may be that history records the Bush presidency as the breakthrough for a revival of domestic liberalism – because Bush conceded that “when someone’s hurt, government has got to move.” I’m not surprised many Democrats are now exploiting that concession.

I’d disagree with the notion that Bush’s compassionate conservatism was necessarily “well-meaning” (as often as not, it was just a means and an excuse to pursue a typical big government agenda of meddling, bossiness and pork), but I think that Andrew’s onto something. The more interesting question, however, is whether “compassionate conservatism” acted as a device to revive domestic liberalism or whether it was an attempt to shape a revival that was already inevitable.