Obama: McCain flip-flops more
Politico’s Jonathan Martin has this exerpt from an Obama appearance scheduled for PBS tonight:
[I]f you compare sort of my shift in emphasis on issues that I’ve been proposing for years, like say, faith-based initiatives, which have raised questions in the press, … if you compare that to John McCain’s complete reversal on oil drilling, complete reversal on George Bush’s tax cuts, complete reversal on immigration where he said he wouldn’t even vote for his own bill, that I think is a pretty hard case to make that somehow I’ve been shifting substantially relative to John McCain.
First, there’s no doubt that McCain has flip-flopped on several issues. But there’s a glaring difference here. McCain’s flip-flops have come over time. Offshore drilling and tax cuts were issues McCain flipped on between well before the 2008 presidential campaign began, and now. By contrast, Obama has drawn criticism for his flip-flops that have come in the midst of this election season, such as gun control, Iraq, and others. Not that McCain hasn’t changed his stance on some issues during the course of the campaign, though it might be a stretch to call what he’s emphasizing and what he’s backing away from flip-flops. Nevertheless, consider:
• Public financing: In late 2007, Obama challenged whomever the Republican nominee might be to enter into a public financing agreement, which provides (and limits) candidates $80 million for post-convention spending. By last month, he said he was opting out of public financing.
• FISA: In October 2007, Obama was against it, promising to filibuster in the U.S. Senate when such a bill arose. By this month, he was voting for it.
• NAFTA: Last year, he was blasting NAFTA and hinting that it might need to be abolished. In less time than it took a campaign aide to assure the Canucks that his boss was only kidding, Obama had backpeddled, calling his comments “over-heated.”
• Gun control: Last November, Obama was saying the Washington D.C. gun ban was constitutional. The reading of the majority opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court last month apparently changed his mind; Obama expressed his support for the court’s decision and said that D.C. had obviously overstepped its bounds with the prohibitive gun law.
• Iraq: He was for immediate troop withdrawals in Iraq. Perhaps it was the constant chiding of the GOP, but more likely it was the success shown by the surge and Gen. David Patraeus in Iraq. After numbers at the start of summer showed a significant reduction in violence in Iraq, Obama decided it was time to visit the country and better define his plan for Iraq.
As Charles Krauthammer points out, the mainstream media has largely given Obama a pass on his flip-flops:
Normally, flip-flopping presidential candidates have to worry about the press. Not Obama. After all, this is a press corps that heard his grandiloquent Philadelphia speech — designed to rationalize why “I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown my white grandmother” — then wiped away a tear and hailed him as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. Three months later, with Wright disowned, grandma embraced and the great “race speech” now inoperative, not a word of reconsideration is heard from his media acolytes.
Worry about the press? His FISA flip-flop elicited a few grumbles from lefty bloggers, but hardly a murmur from the mainstream press. Remember his pledge to stick to public financing? Now flush with cash, he is the first general-election candidate since Watergate to opt out. Some goo-goo clean-government types chided him, but the mainstream editorialists evinced only the mildest of disappointment.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Great post. I will read your posts frequently. Added you to the RSS reader.
July 16th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
What’s more, yesterday Obama’s campaign workers deleted comments he made against the surge from his web site!