This phe­nom­e­nonal rise of Barack Obama has both­ered me from the begin­ning. Who is this per­son of lit­tle expe­ri­ence that has used the void of pos­i­tive rhetoric to win his party’s nom­i­na­tion? Has the nation been so humil­i­ated by George Bush that any breath of air would be good enough to run for the whitehouse?

What the times said today isn’t news. These are the things I have wor­ried about from the begin­ning. The main­stream media was so enam­ored that it wasn’t pay­ing atten­tion. [ Wow a per­son that can speak in full sen­tences, good look­ing, clean cut, goes to church on sun­days, lis­tens with­out inter­rupt­ing, has a good vocab­u­lary.] Maybe it isn’t even news to the peo­ple that wear the but­tons and carry the signs and chant Yes we can. I don’t stand with Obama on a slow and painful with­drawal from Iraq, I don’t agree with Barack Obama on his new stand on FISA, I don’t agree with his abor­tion posi­tion, and I don’t agree with his so called expan­sion of faith-based ini­tia­tives, or his pro death penalty stands or his posi­tion on guns. I didn’t agree months ago and I don’t agree now.

So, who do I have to vote for?

—
from The New York Times
July 4, 2008
Editorial

New and Not Improved

Sen­a­tor Barack Obama stirred his legions of sup­port­ers, and raised our 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 Pres­i­dent Bush’s abuses of power and sub­vert­ing of the Con­sti­tu­tion and dis­owned the big-money power bro­kers who have cor­rupted Wash­ing­ton politics.

Now there seems to be a new Barack Obama on the hus­tings. First, he broke his promise to try to keep both major par­ties within public-financing lim­its for the gen­eral elec­tion. His team explained that, say­ing he had a grass-roots-based model and that while he was for­go­ing pub­lic money, he also was eschew­ing gold-plated fund-raisers. These days he’s on a high-roller hunt.

Even his own chief money col­lec­tor, Penny Pritzker, sug­gests that the magic of $20 dona­tions from the Web was less a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple than of sched­ul­ing. “We have not been able to have much of the senator’s time dur­ing the pri­maries, so we have had to rely more on the Inter­net,” she explained as she and her team busily sched­uled more than a dozen big-ticket events over the next few weeks at which the tar­get price for qual­ity time with the can­di­date is more than $30,000 per person.

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.

The Barack Obama of the pri­mary sea­son used to brag that he would stand before inter­est groups and tell them tough truths. The new Mr. Obama tells evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians that he wants to expand Pres­i­dent Bush’s pol­icy of fun­nel­ing pub­lic money for social spend­ing to religious-based orga­ni­za­tions — a pol­icy that vio­lates the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state and turns a gov­ern­ment func­tion into a char­i­ta­ble donation.

He says he would not allow those groups to dis­crim­i­nate in employ­ment, as Mr. Bush did, which is nice. But the Con­sti­tu­tion exists to pro­tect democ­racy, no mat­ter who is pres­i­dent and how good his inten­tions may be.

On top of these per­plex­ing shifts in posi­tion, we find our­selves dis­agree­ing pow­er­fully with Mr. Obama on two other issues: the death penalty and gun control.

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.”

What could be more rea­son­able than a city restrict­ing hand­guns, or requir­ing that firearms be stored in ways that do not present a mor­tal threat to children?

We were equally dis­tressed by Mr. Obama’s crit­i­cism of the Supreme Court’s bar­ring the death penalty for crimes that do not involve murder.

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.

There are still vital dif­fer­ences between Mr. Obama and Sen­a­tor John McCain on issues like the war in Iraq, taxes, health care and Supreme Court nom­i­na­tions. We don’t want any “redefin­ing” on these big ques­tions. This coun­try needs change it can believe in.

Tags: pol­i­tics, obama, edi­to­r­ial, new york times