In the past 24 hours, I have witnessed the President and key advisors leaving their options open on a variety of fronts. You understand their priorities, and their unwillingness to get boxed in on a particular issue, when you see this.

First example: Social Security. The President again vowed never to privatize Social Security in what sounded like pretty definitive statements in recent speeches. However, privatization doesn’t appear to be on the table in the deficit commission, where rumors have swirled that a benefit cut or an increase in the retirement age is in the offing. Indeed, in yesterday’s speech in Cleveland Obama praised none other than Ronald Reagan for “helping to save Social Security,” which he accomplished through the recommendations of the Greenspan commission, a combination of tax increases and an increase in the retirement age.

So on yesterday’s blogger call with Jason Furman, Joan McCarter asked him flat-out: would the President oppose any cuts or increases in the retirement age? Furman replied that the President has made clear he would oppose “anything that would weaken or undermine Social Security,” which is a nebulous statement. But he was quick to add that the President established a fiscal commission and would not pre-judge their output.

Example two: The payroll tax cut. This was apparently in the mix of options that the economic team discussed before rolling out the Obama recovery package, but it never made the cut. Reports state that they found it too expensive, and that they were concerned about drawing money away from Social Security and Medicare (though that’s an easily remedied bookkeeping matter).

Republican Governor Mitch Daniels included the payroll tax cut in his menu of options for stimulus, and noted deficit hawk Matt Miller pitches it today as something which would get money into people’s hands quickly. Also on that call with Jason Furman, Ezra Klein asked whether the White House would ever rethink its position on the tax. Furman replied, “the President is willing to do whatever it takes to accelerate the pace of job growth and income creation. The proposals from today are the ones he thinks are the best.” Again, not ruling it out.

Example three: the Bush tax cuts. People thought there was some rift between the President and former budget director Peter Orszag on this matter, and there is one, only not what people think: Orszag wants all the tax cuts expired, Obama doesn’t. Both want at least a short-term extension of the middle class tax cuts, and Orszag pronounces himself reluctant but comfortable with extending the tax cut on the highest tax brackets as part of a deal to end them all eventually. This horribly bad negotiating strategy was immediately picked up by Republicans, who sought a two-year extension.

The President, in his speech yesterday, rightly said that Republicans initially passed the Bush tax cuts as a short-term matter, only to hope for an extension, and we shouldn’t go down that road. However, on Good Morning America today, Obama refused four times to make a veto threat on extending the high-end tax cuts:

STEPHANOPOULOS: How deep is your commitment to this fight? Are you saying that if Congress passes a short term extension of all the tax cuts, you’re gonna veto it?

OBAMA: George, here’s what … I’m saying is that we’ve got a fundamental choice about this economy. You can’t have Republicans running on fiscal discipline that we’re gonna reduce our deficit, that the debt’s out of control, and then borrow tens, hundreds of billions of dollars to give tax cuts to people who don’t need them. (crosstalk)

STEPHANOPOULOS: –everyone else, though. You don’t propose a way to pay for those.

OBAMA: Look, the reason is because those folks, as I said over the last decade, at the time when the Republicans were in charge, didn’t see a wage increase. Did not see their incomes go up at a time when their costs for health care, for college tuition, for everything else was going up. So, they are just barely keeping their heads above water. The one group that actually saw their incomes increase substantially when … Republicans were in charge, were the top two percent of Americans. The folks who saw the biggest jump were the top one tenth of one percent of Americans.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Does that mean you will veto an extension of tax cuts to the wealthy?

OBAMA: What I am saying is that if we are going to add to our deficit by $35 billion, $95 billion, $100 billion, $700 billion, if that’s the Republican agenda, then I’ve got a whole bunch of better ways to spend that money.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you’re not saying you’re gonna veto it.

OBAMA: I, there are a whole bunch better ways to spend the money.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How come you don’t want to say veto?

OBAMA: There are a whole bunch better ways to spend the money.

Obama is right on the substance, right on the politics, has the country nominally behind him… but won’t commit.

Now, you can draw the lesson from this that the President is a pragmatist unwilling to rule things out. Yet he’s made plenty of veto threats during his Presidency. Some have been good, like threatening to veto defense bills if certain unnecessary weapons projects were funded in them. Some have been bad, like threatening to veto education spending because a tiny sliver of his Race to the Top program would be diverted to pay for it. But the issue isn’t an ideological disinclination to take a stand.

It’s that he doesn’t want to rule out cutting Social Security, going back to the payroll tax cut, or extending the tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans.

Make of that what you will.

UPDATE: I will say that with rhetoric like this, the White House will look f*****g r******d if they go back on it:

Our position is tax cuts for the middle class. Theirs is tax cuts for millionaires.

…incidentally, Gibbs doesn’t think it’ll come to a veto, suggesting that he believes the President has the votes needed for his position.