Jack Lew, Treasury Secretary: A Compromise Everyone Can Disagree On: Politics Daily Update

With Jack Lew's nomination as Secretary of the Treasury now official, the White House is preparing for strong opposition to Lew from Senate Republicans, who are unhappy with his potential policies and feel he is too tough a negotiator.

But Lew may also have to contend with Democrats, who think his economic policies and former associations make him too conservative for their tastes.

Lew is something of a rarity in Washington -- a true moderate.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean his positions are proper or even well thought out, but it does mean he's spent much of his career avoiding drifting too far to either side of the aisle.

And while that's won him accolades as someone willing to compromise, it's also earned him enemies.

Lew was instrumental during the Clinton administration, when he helped balance the federal budget, leading to surpluses three years in a row, a feat not equaled since and one that should have made fiscal conservatives happy, though partisanship again got in the way.

But one of the ways Lew balanced the budget was to cut spending, and he played an important role in Clinton's welfare reform.

Moderate Democrats laud that initiative and continue to use it as an example of their willingness to institute entitlement reforms.

But progressives have always hated the results of welfare reform, which they say unfairly punished many of the poor, who were overwhelmingly affected by the changes.

They fear similar reforms in Social Security and Medicare.

After leaving the Clinton administration, Lew went into academia, teaching at New York University's school of public service. Conservatives are wary of all things academic, so no points there.

He also volunteered with City Year, an urban-focused charity with goals similar to AmeriCorps.

But in 2006, Lew became CEO of a Citigroup investment firm that managed hedge funds betting on the housing market to fail.

Much of the concern over Lew stems from this seeming dichotomy.

He firmly believes in the social safety net and the promises of the New Deal, but he seems too willing to sacrifice some parts of those promises in order to maintain the integrity of the entire system.

Lew is a pragmatist -- some might say a realist, in much the same way that Bill Clinton was and President Obama is.

If the president is far too liberal for Tea Partiers and Republicans unwilling to compromise on anything, then he is also far too beholden to monied corporate interests and neoliberal agendas for progressives who believe the Clinton years weren't the good old days.

Ultimately, the Lew nomination will probably play out in exactly the same way everything else in the Obama administration has played out. Republicans will do everything they can to block it, and progressives will shut their mouths and fall in line.