Senator Barack Obama stirred his legions of supporters, and raised their hopes, promising to change the old order of things. He spoke with passion about breaking out of the partisan mold of bickering and catering to special pleaders, promised to end abuses of power and subverting of the Constitution and disowned the big-money power brokers who have corrupted Washington politics.
Obama declared that “the same old Washington textbook campaigns just won’t do.” Deploring “triangulating and poll-driven positions,” he said that “telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won’t do.” The Democratic Party had been at its best, he told the crowd, when “we led, not by polls, but by principles; not by calculation, but by conviction.”
But the Obama of 2008 is very different from the pre-election Obama. From the New York Post:
In the last 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 primaries (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, DC, gun ban his campaign had 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.
We now know that Obama isn’t naive – but his ardent supporters are. Obama exhorted them to “believe” (one of his favorite words) in him and his virtue above all – and as soon as they gave him the nomination he wanted, he showed how foolishly credulous they’d been. When it comes to triangulating, he’s Hillary Clinton without the baggage.
From the New York Times:
The new Barack Obama has abandoned his vow to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it includes an immunity clause for telecommunications companies that amounts to a sanctioned cover-up of Mr. Bush’s unlawful eavesdropping after 9/11.
In January, when he was battling for Super Tuesday votes, Mr. Obama said that the 1978 law requiring warrants for wiretapping, and the special court it created, worked. “We can trace, track down and take out terrorists while ensuring that our actions are subject to vigorous oversight and do not undermine the very laws and freedom that we are fighting to defend,” he declared.
Now, he supports the immunity clause as part of what he calls a compromise but actually is a classic, cynical Washington deal that erodes the power of the special court, virtually eliminates “vigorous oversight” and allows more warrantless eavesdropping than ever.
Mr. Obama endorsed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. We knew he ascribed to the anti-gun-control groups’ misreading of the Constitution as implying an individual right to bear arms. But it was distressing to see him declare that the court provided a guide to “reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe.”
We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.
That’s right – Obama is flip-flopping even more than John Kerry did. He’s simply responding to polls and focus groups, trying to discover what position or belief will get him the most votes.
In a March 2004 questionnaire, Obama was asked if the government should “crack down on businesses that hire illegal immigrants.” He replied “Oppose.” In a Jan. 31, 2008, televised debate, he said that “we do have to crack down on those employers that are taking advantage of the situation.”
Obama promised to “restore a law that was in place during the Clinton presidency – called Paygo – that prohibits money from leaving the treasury without some way of compensating for the lost revenue.” He twice voted for PAYGO measures when Republicans were in power. He said he “strongly supports and has voted for commonsense “Pay As You Go,” or “PayGo” rules, which would require any new increases in discretionary spending to be offset by a reduction in other areas of spending.” Yet now he says he’s not going to sacrifice his domestic priorities for deficit reduction. Universal health care, renewable energy, and all he rest won’t be sacrificed on the altar of PAYGO.
In January, the Obama campaign described union contributions to the campaigns of Clinton and John Edwards as “special interest” money. Obama changed his tune as he began gathering his own union endorsements. He now refers respectfully to unions as the representatives of “working people” and says he is “thrilled” by their support.
Obama has publicly stated that his name is African Swahili. But his name is Arabic and ‘Baraka’ (from which Barack came) means ‘blessed’ in that language. Hussein is also Arabic and so is Obama. Obama has said that he never practiced Islam, but he practiced it daily at school, where he was registered as a Muslim and kept that faith for 31 years, until his wife made him change so he could run for office. He has said that his school in Indonesia was Christian, but he was registered as Muslim there. He says he was fluent in Indonesian, yet not one teacher says he could speak the language.
While running for the U.S. Senate in January 2004, Obama told Illinois college students that he supported eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana use. In the Oct. 30, 2007, presidential debate, he joined other Democratic candidates in opposing the decriminalization of marijuana.
Obama, who previously said the issue of gay marriage should be left up to each state, announced his opposition to a California ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriages.
In 2003, talking to the AFL/CIO, Obama said, “I happen to be a proponent of single-payer universal healthcare coverage. That’s what I’d like to see.” Yet in January, 2008, Obama claimed in a nationally televised debate:”I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single-payer.”
In 2007 Obama told an audience that the Kennedys – Jack and Bobby – decided to do an airlift. They would bring some young Africans over so that they could be educated and learn all about America. His grandfather heard that call and sent his son, Barack Obama, Sr., to America. The problem with that scenario is that, having been born in August 1961, the future senator was not conceived until sometime in November 1960. So, if his African grandfather heard words that “sent a shout across oceans,” inspiring him to send his goat-herder son to America, it was not Democrat Jack Kennedy he heard, or his brother Bobby, it was Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In January 2004, Obama said it was time “to end the embargo with Cuba” because it had “utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro.” Speaking to a Cuban American audience in Miami in August 2007, he said he would not “take off the embargo” as president because it is “an important inducement for change.”
Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on late-term abortions, Obama said he “strongly disagreed” with the ruling because it “dramatically departs form previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women.” Obama now says “mental distress” should not qualify as a health exception for late term-abortions, a key distinction not embraced by many supporters of abortion rights. This “refined” position goes against his 100% rating from NARAL in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Last year Obama said he would trust women to make the right decision on partial birth abortion.
That was when Obama trusted women, before he didn’t trust them. BUT, in July 2008 Obama switched positions once again, saying he now wants a mental health exception. So as long as a woman can get her “blues” classified by a medical health professional as “depression,” she has a right to a late term abortion no matter how strongly the majority of citizens feel about the immorality of destroying a fully viable human entity, and no matter what his own positions have been in the recent past?
On the January 22, 2004 edition of “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert and Obama had the following exchange: Russert: “When we talked back in November of ‘04 after your election, I said, ‘There’s been enormous speculation about your political future. Will you serve your six-year term as United States senator from Illinois?’” Obama: “I will serve out my full six-year term. You know, Tim, if you get asked enough, sooner or later you get weary and you start looking for new ways of saying things. But my thinking has not changed.” Russert: “So you will not run for president or vice president in 2008?” Obama: “I will not.”
Change we can believe in, huh?
