The disappointment-generating machine that is the Obama campaign is firing on all cylinders, judging from laments such as this one:

Only an idiot would think or hope that a politician going through the crucible of a presidential campaign could hold fast to every position, steer clear of the stumbling blocks of nuance and never make a mistake. But Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most.

You would be able to listen to him without worrying about what the meaning of “is” is.

This is why so many of Senator Obama’s strongest supporters are uneasy, upset, dismayed and even angry at the candidate who is now emerging in the bright light of summer.

One issue or another might not have made much difference. Tacking toward the center in a general election is as common as kissing babies in a campaign, and lord knows the Democrats need to expand their coalition.

But Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.

The word that you keep seeing in columns and posts about Obama’s recent reversals is “lurch.”  In fact, lurch is the wrong word to describe what has been happening.  The entire process has had much more of the feel of a stage magician using misdirection to make you see things that aren’t real and ignore those that are.  When he makes complete 180-degree turns on a given question, he will either maintain that he never really changed his position or that the reason you think that he changed his position is that some campaign staffer (who probably doesn’t even work for him, if you press him) goofed up.  Occasionally, such as with the FISA legislation, the change will be too obvious to deny, so he plays on the audience’s expectations that in the future he will actually revert back to his earlier position. 

Here’s Obama today according to The Caucus:

“One of the things you find as you go through this campaign, everyone becomes so cynical about politics,” Mr. Obama said.  There is an “assumption that your must be doing everything for political reasons.”

Certainly, Obama’s supporters have to believe that what he has been doing recently has been for “political reasons,” unless he would like them to believe that he wants to trample on the Fourth Amendment.  If his flip on the FISA legislation wasn’t done for political reasons, why on earth would he have done it?  You know, aside from the obvious answer that he wants to increase the power of the executive to make it more powerful for the time when he is President.

What is more disturbing than all of this is the willingness of his cult followers supporters to believe his latest statements, even though they might directly contradict something he said not very long before.  His oracular utterances don’t need to be consistent, because they are his statements, which must make them true, right?  This is what happens when people are optimistic: they expect things that cannot happen and are then made all the more bitter and dissatisfied when those expectations are not met.  Optimism is one of the worst mental and spiritual afflictions, because it feeds desire and attachment more than almost anything else, and so necessarily leads to the misery that comes from the dashing of unrealistic hopes. 

Update: Tom Bevan notes the remarkable agreement between Herbert and Lowry, and says:

On the other hand, the fact that polar political opposites have come to the same unflattering conclusion about your political maneuvering is a warning sign that you are in danger of damaging your brand and losing support among some portions of the electorate.