Will the real Obama please stand up?

Well played Obama, thank you for not folding under manufactured, tedious hysteria and actually doing your homewrok on this bill. This is a perfectly workable bill with lots of room for change come November 2008.  Keep your eyes on the prize and again: bravo.

ditto Wand, this isn't great, but 1) it prevents worse legislation which might pass, 2) keeps the 'he's weak on national security' critiques down', and 3) can be further modified in 09. What's more, NO law can prevent unscrupulous presidents from abusing power. Nor will hammering telecoms who were acting under pretty direct orders from a war-time president be helpful; it might make them take pause next time, but do we really want our president's hands tied in an emergency like that?

Tep, why aren't you applauding Obama's sensible position on this bill, which enables important intelligence-gathering activities while subjecting them to proper judicial and congressional oversight so that the president can't wiretap whomever he wants whenever he wants until the war on terror is won?  After all, it distresses the lefty elements you despise so much.  True, it compromises on the telecom immunity issue, but that was never the main point here, except for some bloggers and bloviators.  (Including bloviators I like.  Olbermann was right to flag telecom immunity as an instance of Bush's willingness to sacrifice national security to protect companies from lawsuits for doing illegal things, while incidentally protecting his own hide, but it always was a side issue in the broader debate on FISA.  As it is, the telecoms will have to show that the surveillence at issue was requested by the attorney general or an intelligence head in writing with the statement that the surveillence had been approved by the president and was determined by him to be lawful.  This is imperfect.  They should have demanded a FISA warrant and be held to account for not doing so.  But it was the best they could do to achieve the main objective.)

Don't hold your breath jhildner, Tep is not capable of applauding anything Obama does, sensible or not. On this, Tep has become the liberal purist - until he's not again. It depends on which position he thinks puts Obama - his motives, his campaign, his background, his wife - any of it - in the worst possible light.  

Obama's support is not only sensible, it's also fairly consistent with his rhetoric and background on Consitutional issues. He has made some very U of Chicago calls on Constitutional interpretation from day one and continues to.

The telecom immunity part does go down hard - but check the background on this: Rockefeller caught Obama's back big time this last year and Obama made it clear he'd reciprocate when people stuck their neck out for him.   These things are personal too. I'd trust Rockefeller if he asked me to eat glass, but that's just me, maybe Obama too.  A Constitution thrasher, Rockefeller is not.  A job saver, he is.

Pardon my bias, but I support what this bill is trying to do in the long run, even if I do think the other side has every right to be angry that we can't put that genie back in that bottle in the middle of an election year and even if it means we can't get one more well deserved kick in to hateful, destructive Bush-land.  

jhildner - I'm not applauding his current championing, on some issues, of positions I support because it was only a few weeks ago that he and his supporters were trumpeting their advocacy of very different positions on these same issues!

Flip-floppery, fine, OK, I get it, tack to the extremes and then "shimmy shimmy shimmy to the center now", as Dana Carvey as GHW Bush instructed Will Farrell as W in that SNL skit from 8 years ago.

But Obama's 180 degree turnabouts are so dizzying, so rapid, that they make a mockery of the nominating process itself. If there's no correspondence (let alone coherence) between the Iowa promises, repeated as recently as a month ago, on core national issues and today's positioning, then the party nominating process becomes a joke, and the party's agenda loses any force or definition.

The problem here, as I see it, is that a candidate who wins on mush and pandering will not have any kind of national mandate when it comes to selling the nation on, and rallying it in defense of, huge policy changes. If you think that our current problems are largely small-bore stuff that doesn't require real and fundamental policy changes, then this isn't a problem. But wasn't "change" the whole point of Obama's candidacy? What does this term mean when used by him these days?

Frankly, I have no idea what this man believes to be good and wise policy-- on Iraq, on FISA, on trade, on religion and politics, on Israel and Iran, on, well, just about anything. I agree that he's very bright. His ex-colleague Cass Sunstein makes a good case for the suppleness and depth of his judgment. The problem is simply that he still seems to be in search of himself, of his core beliefs and convictions.

Wandrey - here's how one leading afr-amer commentator put it today on the NYT OpEd pages:

"[Obama] seems to believe that his shifts and twists and clever panders — as opposed to bold, principled leadership on important matters — will entice large numbers of independent and conservative voters to climb off the fence and run into his yard.

"Maybe. But that’s a very dangerous game for a man who first turned voters on by presenting himself as someone who was different, who wouldn’t engage in the terminal emptiness of politics as usual."

"Tep is not capable of applauding anything Obama does"

I have enormous respect for those TalkBackers and pols and pundits  who've opposed my views, with sincerity and honesty and forceful, fact-based arguments, on the war authorization bill and the Iraq War generally. Purcellneil et al. are good people who make arguments in good faith. I know where they're coming from, and even if I disagree with them, I respect them.

I confess that I have no idea what Obama believes about big issues like the Iraq War. He could turn out to be another Jimmy Carter, or another Scoop Jackson for all I know. An Obama presidency is basically a crapshoot-- where he'll come down on anything is anyone's guess. It doesn't make one a jacobin or a "purist", in your words, to ask for more clarity than Obama has provided us.

This is Classic Obama, tep. A head-fake to the left, and a quick move to the basket.

The guy is good, you can't deny it. In one fell swoop he disses the nutroots, makes a practical compromise on a potentially important security issue, and innoculates himself against a sure Republican attack.

Nice work, I say.

wand,

I hope Bush's boots are all leather so they taste good. Make sure to like them twice, he wants a good shine.

Tep, the flip-flopping narrative on Obama is an exceedingly shallow and stupid one, especially given the other guy.  (And, amazingly, I hold to that view even though a black guy has repeated the narrative!)  It has been dutifully repeated by reporters new to the campaign, who, like you, seem to have forgotten that he did not in fact run to the left in the primary process and, indeed, was never a lefty.  He lost some goo-goo points when he turned down public money -- which he would have been stupid to take and would have accomplished absolutely nothing given his position in this contest, the source of his money, and the other side's obvious intention not to forbid outside-funded swift-boating.  But he has long said that he's not for good government just for good government's sake, but rather to get things done.  He's not into making self-destructive and pointless goo-goo gestures, however much the New York Times may like them.

Let me suggest something to you:  It's not Obama who is finding himself, as you condescendingly suggest.  It's other people who are finding Obama.  He has long been thought to be more left than he is.  When it turns out he's not, he's running to the center.  You mention "religion," and his faith-based initiatives proposal is cited as an example of his "shimmying" and "pandering."  This is epic bullshit.  Obama has always been religious and his faith-based initiative proposal is very much in keeping with his long-stated (and eloquently-stated) views on the subject of religion and politics.  *It's just that you don't know that.*  But that's not Obama's fault.  That's *your* fault, or, assuming you have a lot to do during the day, the media's fault.

You mention FISA.  Obama has long opposed the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, viewed it as illegal, and has sought to enable us to gather the intelligence we need with proper judicial oversight.  That's what he voted for.  It was a tough call, because he didn't like telecom immunity, but, as I said before (which you didn't really respond to), telecom immunity is *not that big a deal.*  It's hardly a "core national issue."

You mention Iraq.  *Obama wants to get out on a timeline with a more defined (and less ambitious) mission.*  Most troops soon, all troops a little later.  Obama will be making disentangling us from Iraq, which he consistently opposed in the first place, a priority, whereas McCain will be holding out for an unrealistic standard of victory.  Now, if you think that Obama, to stay true to his commitment to that priority, must carry it out in a reckless manner without regard to conditions on the ground, then you're wrong.  Obama has always said that he will reserve the right to assess and reasses as it goes along, which *of course* he *should* do.  Anything less would be breathtakingly stupid.

You mention trade.  Obama is free-trade-firendly and skeptical of protectionism.  He has consistently said that he thinks our trade agreements could be better negotiated when it comes to working standards and environmental standards.  I think his views have been consistent on Israel.

Meanwhile, he is in favor of a broad array of middle-class tax cuts and targeted tax credits for "working families" -- your favorite phrase.  His tax policy would be a big change.  his health care plan would be a big change.  These are core national issues, on which he has neither flipped nor flopped (among countless other items of substance), and where he is a million miles from the other guy.  Meanwhile, McCain has thoroughly reinvented himself on just such core national issues.  I frankly don't think McCain cares all that much about domestic policy and so has gone from yesterday's independent maverick to today's Grover Norquist.  I don't tag McCain as flip-flopper just for the sake of the label -- I don't view changing one's mind as that grave a sin, so long as you end up making the right call -- but rather to emphasize that his reputed sanity does not align with his newly discovered policy positions.

The sources of the flip-flopping charge against Obama are penny ante.  They're simply not that big a deal.  Part of his promise of a different sort of politics and so on, is that he doesn't care where ideas come from and isn't afraid to adopt a Republican position if he agrees with it.  He is agnostic on means and is not wedded to partisan orthodoxy.  Many on the left didn't really internalize that, although he has frequently said it.  Some are only recently figuring it out, and they're a little bummed about it.  People run around saying, "Oh shit, I can't pigeonhole him, who knows what he stands for?"  But not being able to pigeonhole him is precisely the different sort of politics he's talking about.  Meanwhile, he remains uniquely honest and smart and committed to goals like broad-based economic security that are firmly grounded in the Democratic tradition.

Now, I sense a list coming.  I did this with basman recently.  We can debate specific charges of flip-floppery if you want.  But, before you put something up there, consider whether it's important -- whether it really does go to a position on a "core national issue" as you say.  Most charges I have seen have been small potatoes, like telecom immunity, or not really flips at all.

By the way, I love your extolling the virtues of the primary process, where, as you may recall, the leading candidates were *very close* on just about all substantive issues.  Let's not pretend that the primary process was about choosing between sharply differing policy orientations.  That's silly.  That's what the *general* is about, and it obviously holds true this time around.

Thank you JHildner.  Well said.

I was going to write a response to tep, but jhildner (as usual) made the case better than I could have.  I want to emphasize the point with regard to trade, though.  Obama's spelled out his position on trade on numerous occasions, and it's been consistent throughout this entire process.  He generally supports free trade agreements, provided that they have appropriate environmental, labor, and safety regulations.  He opposed the Colombia trade agreement because of the extreme level of violence there, particularly against labor leaders.  He supports trade agreements like the ones we have with Oman and Peru.  I don't know how you can get much more concrete than pointing to actual examples of the types of trade agreements you support.

That's been Obama's position the entire time.  Because of his criticism of NAFTA, people developed the impression that he was a protectionist.  He wasn't then and he isn't now.  What's been changing, at least on this particular issue, is not his positions but people's impressions.

hildner - I'll spare you the laundry list-- Bob Herbert and a thousand others have already filled in the details. Characterizing his 180 on the war as "penny ante" is far-fetched, to put it mildly. His ascent to the nomination was based first and foremost on his cultivating an image among the party's left-wing antiwar contingent as an uncompromising opponent of the Iraq War, including his pledge to get us out in short order.

It was _by cultivating of this image on this issue_ that he became the darling of the party's left activist base. This was a deliberate strategic move. Obama staked out this territory in order to sew up the left wing vote and vault past Edwards and Hillary both.

Now, having won the nomination, he is revising his stand on the war-- again, on not some "penny ante" issue but on the issue that, for many if not most of his Iowa caucus supporters and his white yuppie supporters in every other primary was the one that defined his candidacy. You and I can parse his "change" message all we like, but in the Democratic Party's nomination process in 2008, the issue of issues was the vote to authorize the war and every other vote, including FISA- and Gitmo- and surge-related ones thereafter. Without his strong, solid, consistently defiant stand on these issues-- **"defiant" as defined by the party activists whose primary votes decided the nomination**-- without such a stand, Barack Obama right now would be an also-ran, a nice guy positioned favorably to succeed a Pres. Hillary or Edwards or McCain.

Had he put forth his current, moderate stand from the beginning instead of, as Robt Powell puts it, in his telling metaphor, "faking left" and then cutting and driving right, hard, to the basket, I would not have a problem with him. To continue the basketball analogy, though, there's one wee problem with Obama's hed fakes: you're supposed to fake out THE OTHER TEAM's players, not your own.

In their eyes, Obama's now driving to the wrong basket. Me, I think that's sh*tty behavior. I think we Dems should respect each other enough to make strong arguments in good faith and then let the chips fall where they may. I don't recall Bobby Kennedy head-faking his fellow Dems on any issue, ever.

Tep, you seem to have switched objections from ""Frankly, I have no idea what this man believes to be good and wise policy-- on Iraq, on FISA, on trade, on religion and politics, on Israel and Iran, on, well, just about anything." to saying that Obama created a misleading image of his candidacy.  Not that this is a bad thing, since the former objection was at best a dramatic overstatement.

As to Iraq and the primary campaign, in the primaries the only real difference among Clinton, Obama, and Edwards on Iraq was on their *initial* stances on the war, not their plans going forward.  Obama got a lot of mileage out of the fact that he initially opposed the war while Clinton and Edwards supported it.  But there was never a contrast about their future plans.  You make it sound as if Obama won because people thought the other Dems were going to keep us in Iraq. The big picture was that he opposed the war from the beginning and planned to end it.  That hasn't changed.  This is what I thought I was getting when I voted for Obama.

Hey tep, what you're suggesting is a strategy of walking the ball up to the foul line for a set shot as your one and only offensive strategy. This isn't honesty, it's stupidity, and what ever else you can say about Obama, he's not stupid. Personally, I think that's a Good Thing.

My view on the necessity and importance of removing Saddam Hussein is pretty well known. Obama didn't once during the primaries say anything on the issue that would prevent me from supporting him. Edwards certainly did, and for that matter so did Hillary. All three made disingenuous pledges to "end" a war that by any reasonable standard ended years ago, even if it went through a spasm of terrorist-inspired sectarian chaos in the aftermath. And all three knew it.

The fact that much of the looney left projected onto Obama what they wanted him to say is not his fault. The fact that he didn't go out of his way to prevent them from doing so indicates that while intellectually honest, he's also an adroit politician. I WANT an adroit politician in the White House.

jhildner: well said!

tep, I hate to pile on, but I'm a bit offended here and I need to speak up. First, I think jhildner has you pegged, you really do come across as assuming the worst of everything at the expense of appearing utterly disingenious.

"I confess that I have no idea what Obama believes about big issues like the Iraq War."

I call BS on this; I think his positions have been reported on quite sufficiently, although not often at the detail I would prefer.

I like the opening on this article: www.rockymountainnews.com/.../war-stalks-front-in-iowa

I like the end of this one: appropos if nothing else. www.sfgate.com/.../article.cgi

And here is a little bit of honesty regarding Obama's position on the troop surge: mediamatters.org/.../200708220013

If you honestly have no idea where Obama stands on big ticket issues, I humbly suggest that you see a proctologist regarding your cranial-rectal inversion problem.

"Bob Herbert and a thousand others have already filled in the details"

1001 blow-hard analysts do not make a legitimate substitute for factuals. Admittedly, Obama does not often, or typically, take a hard-line position on an issue or talks about issues in terms of contrasting ideals, which can leave people wondering things like "Is he pro-Nafta or anti-Nafta?". The problem i have with this is that these people obviously simply cannot handle anything that does not deal with absolutes, and are the first in line to punish those who would dare to take a nuanced stance, or admit to legitimate claims from both sides of a position, and this Manichaenism is an absolute disservice to American politics.