08 Presidential Candidates, Political Analysis

While the polls have not changed much over the past three weeks, see the numbers over at the ever reliable and precise www.rasmussenreports.com, things may be about to heat up somewhat.  While McCain had been leading Obama for a long time prior to the nomination bounce Obama got and the AFL-CIO endorsement bounce, since then Obama has led McCain by about 5 points, give or take 2 points on any given day for the better part of a month. 

McCain has four hopes for a "bump" in the coming week or two.  One, he just shook up his staff.  The new personnel are expected to catalyze the campaign into a more unified message.  Two, the NRA has pledged to spend $40 million in ad blitzes this season, and in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Heller decision, they were upset enough by Obama's response and/or impressed enough by McCain's to throw their weight behind the GOP candidate to the tune of a record amount.  Three, over 100 Christian leaders met in Colorado where they pledged to help elect McCain this time around and denounced Obama.  While many of them may be more anti-Obama than pro-McCain, such numbers of Christian leaders help define this as more of a moral issues election than it had been which brings in a part of the conversation that will favor McCain.  Four, Obama upset his own base, perhaps for the first time, when he announced a change in his position on FISA courts (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) that the "netroots" considered betrayal from his pledges during the primary.

McCain has been spending his time continuing to do town hall type meetings, taking unscreened questions from anybody present, and meeting with different members of the press during travel.  This past week McCain went down to Colombia and met with President Uribe, a conservative populist, similar to McCain, and discussed U.S.-Colombian relations and trade policy.  While McCain was there, a daring rescue was put into operation where several Americans that had been held hostage by the terrorist FARC organization were rescued, some after having been held for more than 5 years.  The timing was coincidental.

Obama, meanwhile, has focused a great amount of time and effort on large fundraisers lately.  See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/us/politics/03donate.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin.  While Obama focuses on raising money from large money donors, he continues to spend money at an unprecedented rate as well, running ads in many "red states" including those experts believe he has no chance of winning.  In order to maintain that pace, (which presumably is what is in part helping keep his numbers in the polls up), he now has to reverse the course of his decreasing fundraising capabilities that petered out during primary season.  While Obama raised $55 million in February, he sank to $40 million in March, $31 million in April, and only $22 million in May.  The June numbers have not been released yet, (they will be released no later than the 22nd of July), which leads me to believe that they were not good.  While the Clinton donors may now give to Obama, many of them are not supporting, downright opposing, or are not enthusiastic enough to give to Obama as they did to Clinton.  It would not surprise me to see a second straight month in which his expenditures outpaced his fundraising, despite his status as the most prolific fundraising candidate in history.  The new focus is on venue after venue of high priced dinner functions that are limited to only wealthy donors. 

Also, I would predict that one of the new themes attacking Obama will be that he is a flip-flopper who cannot be trusted.  Here is some of the fodder that might be pointed out in support of that theme, to take a top 25 that come to mind immediately:

Changes 1,2, and 3 - Obama changed his position on public financing.  He pledged he would take public financing as a matter of principal and aggressively pursue an agreement with the GOP nominee to do the same.  When it became apparent his self-interest was not in public financing (contrary to his likely assumption in November when he made the promise, well before his fundraising prowess was unleashed), he changed his position.  He first changed it from a pledge to an ambiguous statement as to whether he was retracting the pledge stating he would like to have a conversation with the McCain campaign (who did take the public fundraising pledge) as to the best way to protect the integrity of the process.  The second change was that he then never contacted the McCain campaign to have such a conversation but a few months later swore off public financing, calling the system broken, pointing out two chief rationale.  One was that he needed the money to defend himself from McCain's 527s, laughable even to the Pro-Obama press because McCain has none and only one small 527 in the Dakotas has launched any anti-Obama attacks.  Second was the rationale that Obama had an "army" of small donors that constituted a "parallel public financing system" that would ensure he would not be subject to any of the undue influence of lobbyists and large donors that public financing was meant to protect against.  He was then denounced by the public financing advocates and lost some credibility.  With the new fundraising strategy aimed exclusively at large donors, the same types of lobbyists that he indicated were not significantly funding his campaign, (although they were a large percentage even before the current focus on large donors), we see change #3.

Change 4 - Obama flanked Clinton's left during the primary by reaching out to the "netroots" who constituted a large percentage of his online fundraising team, on the FISA issue.  While to his credit, this is the first and perhaps only departure from the wishes of his base, it also represents a departure from his previous stated position that he would never support immunity for telecommunications companies involved in surveillance.  Now he does support that.  Nothing has changed in the law of great substance, but this may be an effort by Obama to move more to the center for the general election since unlike in the primary, supporting immunity for telecommunications companies involved in surveillance is now in his interest.  See http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/333298 for the story.

Change 5 - Obama has this past week changed his position on the death penalty.  Also, a fairly major issue most of us have had years to form an opinion on, Obama opposed the death penalty as never necessary.  Now, after hearing the facts of some particularly gruesome cases, he has stated he supports the death penalty for such offenses.  To my mind, as gruesome as these cases were, there is no principle that separates them from previous gruesome cases during the time he opposed the death penalty.  It was just unpopular to stake that position in the general election.

Change 6 - Welfare reform.  Obama previously stated he opposed welfare reform, but now he supports it.  Again, his prior position was more popular during the primary and the new position is more popular in the general election.

Change 7 - Decriminalization of marijuana - Obama had previously supported decriminalization of marijuana, and now opposes it.  Not sure what could have changed his mind on this issue.

Change 8 - D.C. School voucher program - opposed it, now he supports it.  Program has not changed, nor has the underlying arguments in favor or against school voucher programs in general.

Change 9 - The Cuba embargo - Obama forcefully called the Cuba embargo "a failed policy" that "must be lifted." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20369459/   After touting the position in Florida to Cuban-Americans, (who constitute a significant voting block in that significant swing state) he changed his position to insisting that the embargo not be lifted.  He pledged in late May that "I will maintain the embargo" as it "provides us the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice."  http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/207613,obama-wont-lift-embargo-on-cuba.html

Change 10 - D.C. Handgun ban - Obama, during the lead up to the Supreme Court's Heller decision, stated he supports the D.C. Handgun ban.  Then, after the 5-4 decision which struck down the ban as unconstitutional, a ruling which is a huge landmark victory for gun owner rights, Obama praised the decision.  This is particularly surprising since he used to be a Constitutional law professor and he must know the history of Constitutional law on the Second Amendment.  The NRA found his endorsement of the decision disingenuous, citing to its members his membership on the Board of Governors of a group devoted to promoting gun control over NRA-type 2nd Amendment arguments.

Changes 11 & 12 - Change 11 is NAFTA.  During the primary, Obama pounded Clinton for her support of NAFTA, which he claimed undermined labor and environmental concerns and had a "devastating" impact on the U.S. economy.  A story arose that Austin Goolsbe, a top economic advisor to Obama, at the time told Canada not to worry about our trade deal being threatened because Obama was just posturing.  The Obama campaign denied Goolsbe's statements and continued to denounce NAFTA and again flanked Clinton's left.  He then promised that if necessary to gain the necessary labor and environmental objectives he would unilaterally opt the U.S. out of the treaty until it could be restructured.  While that sounds tough, it drew a backlash from even those within his own party with foreign policy expertise, who noted that other countries would not know where we stood on our trade policy with them if we were going to unilaterally alter or withdraw from trade treaties, (we have a good 30 or more international free trade treaties spanning the globe).  Obama then stated he would not unilaterally withdraw from NAFTA.  He has since waffled on that again, stating that all the options are on the table, apparently to appease those on the left who liked the idea of unilateral withdrawal to leverage environmental/labor provisions.  Obama's 12th change was his decrying "protectionist" trade policies and then advocating them in other contexts, particularly his denouncement of the trade treaty with Colombia, where high tariffs already limit the capability of American manufacturers to export into their market and they already have tariff free exports to the United States, leaving a clear U.S. jobs advantage in supporting the treaty.  Obama does not deny that either, only stating that Colombia's record on labor rights is too objectionable.  (It is true Columbia does not have the best history on labor rights, but it has gotten better over the past few years).

Change 13 - Obama has changed positions on the Reverend Wright, according to some, 7 times.  See http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352947,00.html.  First, Obama claimed Wright was being taken out of context.  Then he said he disagreed with Wright on many things but he was still a good man and he "could no more disown Wright than disown the African American community."  Then he claimed he was not there in Church on the occasions Wright said those things.  Then, when it became apparent that Wright preached this stuff all the time, Obama distanced himself further condemining the comments of his minister but not the man, which came off as somewhat self-righteous for someone simultaneously being shown to not pay attention during the church sermon.  Next, after Wright noted that Obama was only stating he disagreed with Wright because that's what Obama must do as a politician, Obama noted that he would have left the Church if Wright had not retired.  Then, after Wright used his public microphone to amplify his brand of black liberation theology, (a radical belief system perhaps which Obama still has not rescinded his endorsement of, though perhaps that list is a subject for another post), Obama disowned Wright due to Wright showing "disrespect" to Obama.  Not the 20 years of comments, not the fact his daughters were being ministered to by a crazed man, not the fact he and his wife were perhaps shepherded badly by the man who married them, but disrespect sealed the deal.

Change 14 - Obama implied by stating he would have left the Church that he would remain loyal to the Church since Wright retired.  A month later or so, a visiting Catholic priest gave a sermon in the Church in which he supported Obama and criticized Clinton, who at that time was Obama's rival.  Obama took that opportunity to use the occasion to leave the church.  Although Obama has "reached out" by meeting with evangelicals since then (though their recent alignment behind McCain shows that effort to be a colossal failure) I have not seen anything indicating whether he has joined a new church anywhere or if he attends anymore.  To some, backsliding might be the biggest change.

Change 15-18 - Obama's stances on meeting with foreign leaders, detailed more fully in an earlier post, changed from pledging to meet without preconditions, to essentially only meeting with preconditions.  This could perhaps constitute several changes as it applies in distinct important arenas such as the U.S. relationships/interactions with (15) Iran, (16) North Korea, (17) Venezuela, and (18) Cuba.

Change 19 - Obama and his team have gone from all but calling the Clintons racists and pointing out every problem with the Clintons to staking a position that the Clintons are two people the country "really needs." 

Change 20 - Energy policy - see earlier posts for Obama's refusals to support almost any measure that could produce energy independence, despite having pledged to do so.  Most notably, however, here the change is found in his position on nuclear energy where he has both stated that he does not support the increased use of nuclear energy while (incorrectly) criticizing McCain for failing to do so.

Change 21 - Willingness to visit Iraq and meet with our leaders on the ground there.  This change, like many of the others, came in incremental phases, and is detailed more fully in an earlier post.  He is now promising to go there within the month.

Change 22 - Obama's position on unilateral military action - after promising he would never take unilateral military action Obama has stated he would consider invading Pakistan (a U.S. ally).

Change 23 - Obama's stance on protecting Israel has changed significantly.  He has stated he is committed to protecting Israel, and doing anything possible to prevent Iran from going nuclear, including military force, but has also pledged not to start a war with Iran.  Obama has also stated mulitple positions rather inconsistent with backing up Israel in the middle East, including supporting the Palestinian (and terrorists who share the same views) that Israel must build no new settlements in the West Bank, Israel should trade land for peace, and release hostages.  If not an explicit change, this position is so inconsistently untenable in and of itself that it belongs in the same category. 

Change 24 - The lapel pin.  Though not an important issue to my mind, it belongs in the list of publicly stated positions or principles that he has changed.  He not only stated that he does not wear it, but added that those who do often do so to exhibit a fake brand of patriotism.  He then clarified that he wears it sometimes, but it is not a big deal.  Now, if there is an important function where he appears in front of a bunch of flags, (or a version of the Presidential seal altered in an almost copyright infringement manner to be the Obama Presidential seal), he is wearing the lapel pin.  But still, of all the issues on this list, this is the one that least concerns me.

Change 25 - Perhaps most importantly is his change on Iraq.  Obama has staked out several new positions this past week on Iraq, and earlier posts have detailed his prior trend of backing off his primary season promise to bring the troops home immediately.  Now we are hearing there will be a gradual pullout, or that the pullout will depend on the advice of the commanders on the ground, etc.

Now some may argue that when a candidate changes a position, that is a good thing, because they have come around to the right side of an issue, or that circumstances have changed, or that someone has effectively persuaded them.  In each instance, however, the principled change that is to be credited must come from a candidate who acknowledges that the position has changed in fact.  That has not happened with Obama in any of these instances.  And a cynic might note that it appears these changes are coming more from him listening to polls than to people.  Some of these changes look slight, some dramatic, some calculated step-phased 180 degree changes, etc.  At this rate, it is likely that there will be even more changes by the time election and, perhaps, governing time rolls around for the Illinois junior Senator, perhaps some of which will be in areas that will upset his base further.

Further troubling is that in addition to these many changes on this non-exhaustive list are the many vague, ambiguous positions that a cynic might point out looks as if the shortness on details may be to provide flexibility in adjusting position by leaving it undefined.  Or, the lack of depth in explaining how certain platforms will be achieved shows lack of plans.  Both Clinton and McCain have criticized him along this vein, all but calling him an "empty suit."  For example, Obama's pledges to capture bin Laden and fight al Qaeda while withdrawing from Iraq seem short on details, as do his pledges to restore the international U.S. image while simultaneously pledging in some contexts while condemning in others unilateral U.S. action.  Most importantly perhaps, are the details on how he sees the situation in the middle east and the war on terror playing out if we follow through with his plan of rapid withdrawal from Iraq.  To name a few. 

The time has come for more detail and substance and clear definition for the candidate, not just in stating platitudes about non-objectionable goods we can all assent to (working to stem the mortgage crisis, increasing jobs, improve the economy and bipartisanship, "change", etc.) but getting to some actual details.  A $500 million dollar campaign ought to be able to afford to do that.