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Amazingly, and disappointingly, Barack Obama has publicly stated more positions on the war this week than a Tijuana prostitute assumes while entertaining an afternoon’s worth of clients.
His gushing views, seldom rigid, keep changing like the rushing waters of a creek: His clearly voiced opinions don’t stay within your sightlines long enough for you to judge, maturely, their nature and how closely they align with yours.
Publicly, and deservedly this afternoon, Mr. Obama is being called a liar — not for substantially changing his declared views but for a far worse sin: openly, brazenly, denying that he had reversed his views.
This is called lying, a character deficit that drops him into the class of the last empty-suit candidate who told lies and got caught, John Kerry. Mr. Obama’s well-known promises have been recorded not only by the media but by fans.
Puffing and huffing as he retreated yesterday, Mr. Obama said he did not change his views. He said he only “refined” them. Pal, you refine sugar.
Where in the World Do You Stand, Pal, Here? There? Anywhere?
The central question for Mr. Obama regards his swiftly melting stance on when he will order our troops home from Iraq — he has bolted from an “immediate start” to nuancing his original stance, then denying the nuance, then becoming more amorphous in his statements. Although his handlers have kept him walled off from the press, he did something highly unusual yesterday. He summoned usually friendly reporters to not one but two press conferences. In the second, he denied what he said in the first. Character failure or rookie mistake?
It is ironically funny to all except Mr. Obama’s shady/criminal friends on the far left that he is edging closer to President Bush’s signature positions than John McCain. Several days ago, he promised to largely replicate Mr. Bush’s faith-based initiatives while The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times choked and coughed up their wheat germ.
He has been backpedaling faster than Lance Armstrong on drugs on what had been regarded, since the start of the primary season 6 months ago, as his showcase issue:
A promise to deliver on the one hardline position he seemed to cradle both in his arms and in his mercurial mind:
Declare an end to the war within days or weeks, then jerk the troops out of Iraq faster than your kids clean their bedrooms.
Repeatedly when Hillary Clinton was chasing him through the primaries, Mr. Obama, in unvarnished language that was aimed at the uncomplicated in his audiences, he stated his unalterable opposition to a war he regarded as despicable. This was child’s play, choir-preaching
But here was the rose-colored punch-line:
Playing bombastic cheerleader to uninquisitive fanatics who screamed their anti-war approval, as if their side had just scored a touchdown, he clinched his case by socking ‘em in the heart — yeah, team — with a plainly phrased vow to bring all of the troops out of Iraq by the end of next year.
For possibly the only time during the primaries, Mr. Obama did not equivocate.
Not a hazy date in the foggy future. No, sir. Crowds ate up the hot talk. On cue, they yelped as if a big fat guy with a half-smoked stogie and a beer-barrel belly had just daintily stepped on their open-toed shoes. Fans were so high they didn’t even need to reach for their own drugs that night. They were so wildly jubilant that the less sophisticated among them would even have denied global-warming.
Woosh. Now that the general campaign has begun, Mr. Obama is running away from that position faster than a bank robber who can feel the warm breath of pursuing cops.
Murgatroyd, we are on our way to the stars. Grab my heels, and we will sail over these buildings as if one of us is Superman.
By early June, once Mr. Obama had convincingly defeated Vote for Me Because I Am a Woman, his advisers convinced him that the sensible people in America heavily outnumber the yahoos he had been attracting. They told him if he wanted to become President, he had better start forcefully moderating his most extreme positions in order to upgrade and broaden his appeal.
After practically sailing through the primaries without seeming to work up a sweat against She Whom We Thought Must Be Served, Mr. Obama is acting like a teenager who was the star of the Senior Prom. Now that the dance is over and he has to prove himself worthy, he asks forlornly, “What do I do?”
Mr. Obama plainly has growing up to do. If you are a cheating husband and caught in the wrong room of the house, it ain’t cool to resurrect Groucho’s line: “Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?”
Where Is That Mack Truck?
Heaven knows that Mr. McCain has changed a basket full of his positions. Mr. McCain, the seasoned candidate, has copped to his switches. Mr. Obama, sadly, has yet to learn that truth-telling is a big deal to those of us who count ourselves as sensible.
Morally, the gap between the two candidates is monstrous — and swelling by the hour.
Meanwhile, here is the good news. By the 4th of July, wagering on the Left and the Right was that before this month is gone, Mr. Obama’s artfully muddied war stance will be virtually inseparable from Mr. McCain’s.
