Lefty blogger Glenn Greenwald does a nice job documenting Barack Obama's serial betrayals of the last two weeks:
The choices Obama makes about how he campaigns and the positions he takes are extremely consequential in how political issues in this country are perceived. In the last two weeks alone, Obama has done the following:
*intervened in a Democratic Congressional primary to support one of the worst Bush-enabling Blue Dogs over a credible, progressive challenger;
* announced his support for Bush's FISA bill, reversing himself completely on this issue;
* sided with the Scalia/Thomas faction in two highly charged Supreme Court decisions;
* repudiated Wesley Clark and embraced the patently false media narrative that Clark had "dishonored McCain's service" (and for the best commentary I've seen, by far, on the Clark matter, see this appropriately indignant piece by Iraq veteran Brandon Friedman);
* condemned MoveOn.org for its newspaper advertisement criticizing Gen. Petraeus;
* defended his own patriotism by impugning the patriotism of others, specifically those in what he described as the "the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties" for "attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself" and -- echoing Jeanne Kirkpatrick's 1984 RNC speech -- "blaming America for all that was wrong with the world";
* unveiled plans "to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and -- in a move sure to cause controversy . . . letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions," a move that could "invite a storm of protest from those who view such faith requirements as discrimination" -- something not even the Bush faith programs allowed.
That's quite a two weeks.
Here's what I don't get: Obama spent the entire primary season showing a shocking breadth of ignorance on a staggering array of issues. As I've written many times, he has never come across as a man who has given policy matters much serious thought. It was a telling moment when he was photographed with Fareed Zakaria's latest book. While I thought the book was weak, even if one thought otherwise it still inarguably wasn't exactly groundbreaking in any scholarly or philosophical sense. It was the thinly footnoted ramblings of a Newsweek columnist. Little in it would have been new (except for the fact that America is defintiely in decline because we no longer have the world's biggest Ferris Wheel) to a wonk or a big-brained Harvard law grad who had been pondering significant matters for decades. The fact that Obama had possibly turned to it as a potential repository of deep thoughts was equal parts disturbing and laughable.
The point is this: Whatever positions Obama has espoused have not been the result of a hard-earned and rigorously arrived at political philosophy. As such, his positions will inevitably prove malleable as he goes through the process of familiarizing himself with policy debates. To put it another way, can you really flop if you never flipped in the first place?
Or try another formulation: Is Obama such an attractive figure and his hope/change shtick so alluring that we should just give him the presidency and let him figure out where he stands once he gets into office?
