Authenticity
I don’t think Obama is really “moving to the center” on FISA, NAFTA, guns, or even taxes. He is, to the contrary, being the authentic Obama: cautious, fairly risk-averse, willing to change his mind as facts (and sometimes political currents) warrant. The broad expanse of his policies remain center-left — or left-center. ~Marc Ambinder
Ambinder is right about this, and his post sums up the difficulty a lot of people seem to have in identifying where Obama fits on the spectrum. Despite his overwhelmingly progressive record on domestic policy, many will mistake his cautious and deliberative style as proof that he is more “centrist” than he is in this area, while others will misread some of his positions during the primary contest as proof that he is actually insufficiently progressive on domestic policy because he ran to the right of Clinton on certain things. Those who should be reassured by his record are put off by his presentation, and those who like his presentation desperately avoid taking his record seriously. Foreign policy critics from the right refuse to take his obvious interventionist and “pro-Israel” positions for what they are, while his admirers on the left and right will pretend that he is just saying these things to get elected. His position on the war in Iraq is the thing that keeps tripping up both groups, because it was a position born as a pander to an antiwar crowd that has since been mythologised into a brave and bold act of defiance. Two years later, he said he wasn’t sure how he would have voted when he was in the Senate, and then when he was in the Senate he adopted the position of those Senators who had voted for the war but had since come to regret it. Why this should inspire anything but dread in antiwar voters, I cannot say.
He still is quite far to the left and is running on the most left-leaning platform since 1972 (I have seen others say 1968), but that doesn’t rule out the possibility that he will abandon any position if it poses a political threat to his career. This is the sort of thing that some of my friends argued made Romney a preferable Republican nominee–there was nothing that he would defend to the bitter end, but was utterly flexible, which would make for a nice change from the Bush years. Perhaps, but I don’t think that this is what the Obamaites had in mind when they responded to the call for “change.”
When he flips suddenly on an issue, everyone thinks they have figured out that he is actually just an opportunist, but this doesn’t really take into account that Obama’s aversion to political risk is the “authentic Obama.” He is being true to himself, so to speak, by changing his positions on major policy questions for maximal advantage, because the purpose of the exercise has always been to advance his career. There’s nothing new or remarkable in that, and indeed his sudden rise through the political ranks would be truly unbelievable if he had spent his time standing on principle or waging doomed fights out of conviction. Instead, he has gamed the system masterfully and is on the threshold of supreme power. The question remains whether there will be anyone he won’t disappoint once he has it.
This analysis carefully avoids dealing with Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq in 2002, which, if the war had turned out differently, would have effectively ended any hope of a national political career. At the time, this was such a risky move that almost no nationally ambitious poilitician took it. So your cynicism seems in need of some reality adjustments.
As for Obama’s acceptance of the war since then, yes, he’s not blind to the reality that the nation failed to heed his advice and went ahead. He’s called for withdrawals, but understands that it’s a different situation now, and that we have been stuck with certain consequences of our bad decisions. Yes, call this risk-averse, and it is, but it was his risk-averse disposition that led him to decide that invading Iraq was an incredibly risky and unrewarding thing to do. So how is this a bad thing?
If he wanted to win the Senate nomination and be elected to the Senate from Illinois, taking the position that the senior Democratic Senator from Illinois took was the easy and obvious and safe thing to do. The risk to his career was minimal, and the far greater danger at the time would have come from siding with the administration. If he had been in Harold Ford’s position and taken an antiwar stand, that would have been bold and, of course, it would have also been politically suicidal in Ford’s position. Obama was in a position to get political advantage at home by taking the stand and then has been able to exploit that original low-risk decision for impressive political gain afterwards. As many of his supporters have said on other blogs, without Obama’s opposition to the war his candidacy for this election would never have gone anywhere.
I don’t see how opposing the war would advance his path to the US senate as of 2002, in the midst of 9/11 and pre-war pro-military, pro-intervention hysteria. It was certainly fine if all he wanted to do was keep his state senate seat in liberal Hyde Park, but it would have been disastrous in a statewide race to oppose a popular and likely successful war – which is what everyone expected it to be at the time. Certainly there were few Democrats who opposed the war for this very reason, to protect themselves elctorally, and not because they all wanted to run for President. Illinois is a Democratic state, but there are plenty of Democrats who would have been far more viable than Obama if he the war had turned out as expected, and he’d never have been able to win a primary in any US senate race with that kind of record behind him. You are making retrospective judgments not taking into account the realities of the time, when coming out against the war was indeed courageious and risky for any politician who wanted to rise above his local political world like Obama. And yes, you are right that without that opposition to the war his career would not have taken the trajectory it has, but there’s no way he could have known that back in 2002, nor did anyone else. I’d like to know the number of people who heard Obama’s speech and thought it was some cynical posturing for national office. Everyone knows the opposite, that it would have been courageous for any politician to come out against the war back then, when any opposition was being taken as unpatriotic, cowardly lack of seriousness about national defense. Certainly if Hillary or Edwards or Kerry had come out against the war, it would have been seen as courageous and risky, which is why none of them did it. No one would have accused them of taking the easy way out then, and they were clearly interested not only in running for President, but retaining their careers. Politician after politician sold out for the sake of protecting their ability to get re-elected or seek higher office. Obama did not, as a matter of clear conscience. That courage and sound judgment is what has propelled him to national prominence as he has been proven to have taken the right risk and made the right decision. If that was political calculation, it was a genius move, and in and of itself says that he’s more than qualfied and deserving to be President.
Also, if Obama had wanted to play it safe back in 2002, why even take a position on the war? As a state senator, his views on the issue weren’t politically relevant. He could easily have said nothing and let the situation play itself out, taking a position only as it became necessary. Instead, he committed himself to a criticism of the war when it went against the grain of most of the country, even most of the Democratic party and its leadership. Dick Durbin should be praised for his courage as well. Of course, Durbin was on the Senate Intelligence committe, and knew that the prewar intellgience was being cooked, which might have helped him make his stand. Likewise, Obama may have been emboldened by the clear certainty that he was right, and that the war would likely turn out badly. The problem is, every thing you take away from the courage column, you have to give back on the judgment column. Combine them together and you have a highly admirable combination.