Back-pedaling Obama morphing toward President Bush
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
Here’s something the Obamaniacs probably don’t care much about – they just want to get their man into power – but the rest of us should.
As Barack Obama comes more clearly into focus as a man and a politician, it is the ease with which he abandons inconvenient but supposedly defining core positions.
Which demonstrates why voters should concentrate on the content of Obama’s character, which defines the man who would be president, and not on easily changeable position papers and ad-libbed stands made to gain advantage.
Obama’s newly minted reversals include coming around to President George Bush’s positions on terrorist surveillance, i.e., eavesdropping on people who want to kill us; winding down our military presence in Iraq with peace and honor; NAFTA and international trade; gun rights; faith-based charities; and not sitting down with rogue dictators, apparently on the theory that he alone is destined to charm the course of history.
We credit the Wall Street Journal for insightfully noting in its July 2 opinion pages that Obama is not merely running to the center in advance of the general election.
He is fleeing from his seemingly ironclad pledges of the “hope and change” politicking days of the primaries.
“Bush’s Third Term” was the waggish headline a WSJ editor puts atop the opinion column.
While Obama’s positions change with the tides, his past associations remain, shark-like for his campaign, beyond the reef, a constant menace. The campaign has to hope more of the same do not surface, at least before Nov. 4.
Obama and wife Michelle go back 20 years with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he of the infamous “God damn America” rant and other hate speech.
As prospective first lady, Michelle Obama is fair game for describing Americans as a “mean people” and for saying she had never been proud of her country until her husband ran for president.
There are the others: Reverend Michael Pflegger, cut from Reverend Wright’s cloth; Obama friends William Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dhorn, the 1960s terrorist couple from the “Weather Underground” bomber group; Tony Rezko, the Chicago political fixer for the Democratic machine; and, just in this week, a better focus developing on the Chicago bank functionaries who got the Obamas the sweetheart deal on the loan for their million dollar-plus mansion.
We would add among the less than creditable associates, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who has popped into headlines as a prop for other Democrats, including John Kerry in his failing White House bid.
Clark rates a mention for his back-firing attempt last week to discredit a legitimate American war hero, John McCain, as a sort of ride-along jet jockey. Meanwhile, Clark suggests his idea of a true leader in Barack Obama – a candidate with limited public service and no congressional legislative accomplishment, a blank slate for vague ideas and negotiable promises, and little else beyond the collection of distasteful personal baggage listed above.
As noted, Obama’s new positions can easily be switched back to the same old-same old liberal flotsam and jetsam the day after a “President Obama” is sworn in.
Unfortunately, if that happens, he will by then be commander-in-chief of all U.S. military forces, head of the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the State Department and every other department and agency of government.
Not a pretty picture for those of us who would like to see some record of achievement from the man who speaks so well but has done so little; so little, that is, beyond a few years in the U.S. senate, less than one full term, a few more in the senate of Illinois, and before that trolling for grievances and voter registrations as community organizer for the radical ACORN group in Chicago.
Obama’s switches on issues show why character easily trumps politics for taking the measure of a possible future president.
John McCain has demonstrated principled behavior during a life in the military, as a brutalized prisoner of the North Vietnamese, and in Congress.
Obama has shown a talent for demagogic oratory, flawed judgments, finding his way into dubious associations, naiveté toward some of the world’s most deranged dictators, and “organizing” – although what came of the organizing other than furthering his own ambition appears to be, not much.
“Tell me who your friends are,” the saying goes, “and I will tell you who you are.”
Republicans, Independents and, yes, even Democrats should think about it.
July 2008
