I have long thought it pernicious idea that one candidate can transcend politics as we know it. Some candidates are better than others, but all are politicians by definition, and that carries with it certain kinds of baggage. Barack Obama began his candidacy precisely by selling a vision of transcendence, and a lot of his voters clearly bought into it. So I am genuinely grateful that Senator Obama has been working tirelessly for weeks now to tear that vision into microscraps. Here's what he said today, from the Washington Post:
By Anne E. Kornblut
POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. -- Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday broadly dismissed recent stories that he is moving toward the political center, saying he has always held certain centrist views -- on encouraging faith, on the right of individuals to own guns -- and that attempts to portray him otherwise are the work of cynics.
Obama, egged on by a raucous audience, said he would like to address "this whole notion that I am shifting to the center, or that I am flip-flopping." "The people who say this apparently haven't been listening to me," Obama said.
Well, Obama is now in the position of the naked guy telling people who can plainly see his pud wiggling about that he is wearing a fine and modest set of clothes. Here's Rich Lowry at Real Clear Politics:
In the past few weeks, Obama has broken two pledges (to take public financing in the general election and to filibuster legal immunity for telecoms that cooperated with the government in terrorist surveillance); has belittled his own rhetoric during the primary campaign (saying it could get "overheated and amplified" on the issue of trade); redefined his promise to meet without preconditions with the leaders of hostile states until it's basically meaningless; endorsed a Supreme Court decision striking down a Washington, D.C., gun ban his campaign had previously said he supported; and made muddy, centrist-sounding statements about his positions on Iraq and abortion that he had to go back and try to clarify.
But if you don't believe Lowry, who is no friend of Obama or his party, you might take seriously Bob Herbert, very much a man of the left. From the New York Times:
One issue or another might not have made much difference. Tacking toward the center in a general election is as common as kissing babies in a campaign, and lord knows the Democrats need to expand their coalition.
But Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.
So there he was in Zanesville, Ohio, pandering to evangelicals by promising not just to maintain the Bush program of investing taxpayer dollars in religious-based initiatives, but to expand it. Separation of church and state? Forget about it.
And there he was, in the midst of an election campaign in which the makeup of the Supreme Court is as important as it has ever been, agreeing with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas that the death penalty could be imposed for crimes other than murder. What was the man thinking?
Another voice on the left, E.J. Dionne, notices the same thing. So does the Washington Post, though this Democratic organ welcomes what it sees as a more sensible policy on Iraq. I might welcome it too, if only I could figure out what it is. And if all this weren't enough, my esteemed Keloland colleague Todd Epp seems to feel a bit betrayed by the Phenom.
But it is Herbert who puts his finger on what is amazing about Obama's sudden, dramatic sidesteps:
Only an idiot would think or hope that a politician going through the crucible of a presidential campaign could hold fast to every position, steer clear of the stumbling blocks of nuance and never make a mistake. But Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most.
You would be able to listen to him without worrying about what the meaning of “is” is.
This is why so many of Senator Obama’s strongest supporters are uneasy, upset, dismayed and even angry at the candidate who is now emerging in the bright light of summer.
It's silly to deny that Barack Obama is flip-flopping at an unprecedented frequency. Some folks are probably hearing the waves on their iPods. What is most interesting is what it says about the Obama campaign's view of the election. To be sure of victory, he must adopt a lot of conservative positions. That's what Clinton adviser Dick Morris called "triangulating." Obama is absorbing the Clintonian strategy, whether or not he is absorbing Clinton voters. But triangulating is necessary only if you think that most of the electorate doesn't really believe what you believe. We have learned a lot about Barack Obama over the last couple of weeks.
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