All politicians flip flop. Well, let's say almost all. McCain did it recently on offshore drilling. Bush did it spectacularly on nation building. Sometimes a flip flop is obviously the right thing: when you find out you're wrong on something important, or circumstances change. Mostly it's a matter of damage control.
But Barack Obama has been flip flopping so much of late that he is starting to look like a drill bit. Consider this piece, from the New York Times:
Senator Barack Obama’s decision to support legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants has led to an intense backlash among some of his most ardent supporters...
During the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama vowed to fight such legislation to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. But he has switched positions, and now supports a compromise hammered out between the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership. The bill is expected to come to a vote on the Senate floor next Tuesday. That decision, one of a number made by Mr. Obama in recent weeks intended to position him toward the political center as the general election campaign heats up, has brought him into serious conflict for the first time with liberal bloggers and commentators and his young supporters.
Now I think Obama's revised position is clearly the right one. Companies that cooperated with the government in its efforts to prevent another terrorist attack shouldn't be punished for it. What Obama thinks is now anyone's guess, if he thinks of anything other than how to win. It's charming that this has created a rebellion in his own ranks.
Steven Stark at Real Clear Politics thinks that this Obama's real vulnerability, and I am inclined to agree.
How could the GOP make an effective case against Obama? The same way almost every successful campaign has built a case against a relative neophyte in the past. The more experienced opponents of Barry Goldwater (in 1964), George McGovern (in 1972), and Walter Mondale (in 1984) each ran the same kind of ad, accusing their opponents of flip-flopping on issues. Those specific assaults, of course, embodied a much larger critique.
Flip-flop attacks aren't really about the issues at hand. Instead, they're a way of reminding voters, "You don't really know this person well enough, do you?" Plus, they're a great way to make a candidate who appears to be "above politics" look as political as everyone else. In that sense, they are really character attacks on the opponent, and the reason they reappear so often in presidential politics is that they are often highly effective.
My sainted Grandmother voted against McGovern, she told me, because he was wishy-washy. Obama is surely giving his opponents plenty of yarn for that sweater. And it's one thing to let the independent voters know that you are just another politician. It's another to drive 7,000 of your own loyal supporters into a campaign to keep you honest.
Obama may not really be the radical that conservatives make him out to be. He would no doubt fill his administration with a lot of genuine radicals, and that's no small thing. As for Obama himself, I am beginning to think that there is nothing there, at bottom. He is another Bill Clinton without, one hopes, the debilitating character flaws. I am not sure that's such a bad thing. A candidate who cares only about winning and fame usually finds out that nothing succeeds like success. I have often said that Clinton's presidency was remarkably successful from a policy point of view precisely because he guessed right what would be the winning policy.
But Stark is surely right that this flip-flopping is a vulnerability. McCain would do well to exploit it.
Recent Comments