Keith Hennessey offers a fascinating take on how 2011 might play out differently than Clinton’s showdown with congressional Republicans in 1995:

Politically, the 1995 Republicans message trumpeted both deficit reduction and tax cuts. The Republican 2011 message pushes spending cuts and deficit reduction, but not tax cuts. Yes, there’s an important pro-growth tax reform component to the Ryan plan, but he says it should be revenue neutral. So while those on the left will argue that Republicans are cutting taxes, this time the Republicans won’t be agreeing with that presentation.

As Hennessey goes on to explain, President Obama will run into a problem if he insists that Republicans are focused on cutting taxes at the expense of poor seniors, etc.:

If the President insists on calling this policy “cutting taxes,” he will be forced to acknowledge that he, too, proposes tax cuts beyond 2012. Given his framing, he will be arguing, “My deficit-increasing tax cuts are OK, but your additional deficit-increasing tax cuts for the rich threaten these important spending programs.” That’s a tougher argument to win, especially given their relative sizes. Last year, the deficit effects of the Republicans’ so-called “tax cuts for the rich” were less than one-fourth the size of the agreed-upon “tax cuts for the middle class.”

There is another important difference between 1995 and 2011 that has the potential to cut both ways: the economy was in far better shape in 1995, and the unemployment rate was plummeting. This strengthened President Clinton’s hand politically. Yet it also softened the blow of paring back government expenditures.