Time-Blog Real Clear Politics
by Tom Bevan

This morning we have an event as rare as a solar eclipse: Rich Lowry and Bob Herbert agree on something. In this particular instance, they’re agreeing on the depth of cynicism of Barack Obama’s race to the middle.

Herbert:

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.

And Lowry:

What makes Obama’s “textbook” dash to the center so extraordinary isn’t just its speed, but how it falsifies the very essence of his candidacy. It’s as if Bill Clinton won the Democratic race in 1992 and announced suddenly that actually he wasn’t a “new kind of Democrat or if George W. Bush, after winning his party’s nomination in 2000, forswore “compassionate conservatism or if John McCain, after winning the GOP contest this year, declared in favor of a hard deadline for withdrawal from Iraq.In the last few weeks, Obama has broken two pledges (to take public financing in the general election and to filibuster legal immunity for telecoms that cooperated with the government in terrorist surveillance); has belittled his own rhetoric during the primaries (saying it could get “overheated and amplified” on the issue of trade); redefined his promise to meet without preconditions with the leaders of hostile states until it’s basically meaningless; endorsed a Supreme Court decision striking down a Washington, DC, gun ban his campaign had said he supported; and made muddy, centrist-sounding statements about his positions on Iraq and abortion that he had to go back and try to clarify.

Has there ever in recent political memory been so much calculation and bad faith by a politician who has made so much of eschewing both?

You can interpret the Herbert-Lowry mind meld one of two ways: on one hand, there’s no better indication you’ve hit a bullseye in the political center than when you’re attacked from both the left and the right.

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.

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