My eye was caught by an article in the Sunday paper. “Flip-flops suggest a more politically practical Obama” was the headline. It was an analysis by Margaret Taley of the McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
The headline suggested what everyone already knows, that the mainstream media is totally in the tank for Obama and will no doubt forgive him anything he says and does so long as he can be elected President and return full political power to the Democrat Party. The headline, however, was misleading.
Taley devoted nearly half of her analysis to the many ways Obama has already reversed himself on key issues and then to the excuses put forth by Democrat political operatives. “Obama’s aides dismiss criticism of his shifts as misunderstandings of his original positions or merit-based decisions that Obama never ruled out.”
What was most interesting about the analysis was the way it revealed that even liberal bloggers like Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the Daily Kos have some serious doubts, calling Obama’s vote for the wiretap legislation a “really craven flip-flop.” Zuniga, however, defended Obama’s rejection of public financing after years of championing it, asserting that 527s, independent groups, will spend millions to raise questions about Obama. Let’s hope so.
It was the 527s, groups independent of the political parties that played a key role in defeating John Kerry when he ran against G.W. Bush. His “war record” in Vietnam was exposed as a sham. After that it became just too easy to make fun of him.
It’s going to be easy to pull apart the façade that Obama has created for himself because you could write an entire book about the fiction that is the story of his life, his religious affiliation, his close association with extreme leftists and other unsavory types. Passing himself off as a different kind of politician in Washington, D.C., his campaign is staffed by some of the most skilled Washington, D.C. insiders money can buy.
Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, was quoted saying, “This is the transition between a fantasy campaign and a real campaign. In a fantasy campaign you are in the clouds and never compromise. In a real campaign, you compromise.”
My problem is that everything I have seen and heard about Obama reflects a fantasy, a fiction he has concocted about himself. Offering “hope” and “change” is a far cry from offering real solutions to real problems.
Even the Daily Kos blogger, Zuniga, admits “He’s a politician, and things change with politicians, at the end of the day.”
Isn’t that what his former pastor of twenty years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, called him? A politician? Aren’t we all raised to know that politicians always make lots of promises they don’t keep? Aren’t some politicians wolves in sheep’s clothing?
