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By Turning Right, Obama Heads In Right Direction

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 16, 2008

The reaction to Jesse Helms' death on July 4 is a reminder of how bipolar American politics has become. The right praised him as a man of principle who also overflowed with the milk of human kindness. The left retorted - rightly, in our view - that he was also a bigot and a bully.

But at least conservatives and liberals have discovered one thing they can agree on: that Barack Obama is a cynical opportunist, a flip-flopper and a shape-changer, a man who brushes aside his principles with the same nonchalance that lesser mortals reserve for their dandruff.

This is all overstated. Obama was always clear that he was running for the presidency of the United States, not the chairmanship of MoveOn.org. He has repeatedly presented himself as a post-partisan problem-solver who wants to work with Republicans as well as Democrats. His enthusiasm for "faith-based" social services is long held.

Even on the issue that first endeared him to the left - the Iraq war - he made it abundantly clear that he was opposed to that particular war, not to the exercise of American power. Still, there is no doubt that he has engaged in a bit of vigorous repositioning in the past few weeks.

But isn't moving to the center just sensible politics as the primary turns into a general election? Ronald Reagan devoted a great deal of energy to persuading people that he was not a trigger-happy ideologue. Bill Clinton sold himself as a New Democrat who felt Middle America's pain. George Bush initially styled himself a "compassionate conservative."

Polls suggest that Americans are happy with a certain amount of flip-flopping: Bush has all but destroyed the market in stubborn consistency.

And Obama's hard-edged cynicism also helps to quell one of the biggest doubts about his candidacy - that he is too naive and soft- minded to hold the most powerful job in the world.

Obama is capitalizing not only on his huge fundraising advantage over McCain but also on his rival's problems with his base. The vital question is not whether Obama is changing his positions but whether he is changing them for better or worse. Here the picture is largely positive.

His newfound enthusiasm for NAFTA and free trade could help to avert a prosperity-destroying drift to protectionism. Indeed, his chief economics adviser, Jason Furman, sounds like the very model of good sense.

Obama's willingness to support wiretapping in certain circumstances suggests that he is trying to strike a balance between security and privacy in what he calls a "dangerous world." The policy challenge is not to pursue vendettas against the Bush administration but to find a reasonable set of rules to govern surveillance. His repositioning on the Iraq war represents a recognition that the situation on the ground in Iraq has changed dramatically.

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