Feeding The Fish

There’s an article at The Times neatly demonstrating the idea that Obama’s rightward wing is genius politics and the left will just have to get over it, he knows what he’s doing,the Unity Ponies are a comin’, etc.

Since securing the Democratic nomination a few weeks ago, the only change coming from the Illinois senator has been in what he seems to stand for. Last month he dropped his opposition to a Bill before Congress that would give telecoms companies immunity from prosecution for carrying out illegal wiretaps on potential terrorist suspects.

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This is another example of how smart the Obama campaign is. They understand that the biggest impediment to an Obama presidency is lingering doubt about whether their man is a straight-down-the-middle American. Despite having a couple of bestsellers to his name, he is still something of a blank page to most voters, one on which his opponents are trying to doodle all kinds of unflattering portraits of an extremist.

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What is more, by abandoning so many left-wing totems, Mr Obama is emphasising that his promise of change is more than just a swing to the left of the old political pendulum; that his promise of post-partisan politics is a genuine one.

The trouble with this theory is that Obama was a solid centrist at the start; he’s already where most Americans are.  Being “post-partisan” is nothing new, Clinton called it “triangulation” and the short of it is selling your soul to the right on issues of your choice in the hope of getting elected.  Most of these changes aren’t just running to the centre, it’s running to the far right. The idea that the President has the power to break the law as he sees fit is something that should have been thrown out with Nixon, now what Bush did illegally is being approved by the Democratic nominee. This is not a token issue, Obama gives himself an enormous increase in presidential power by going down that road.

I’m also not sure as to the genius of convincing the voters he’s not a blank page by reminding people his principles are so unimportant he will jettison as many as needed to get elected, people keep rejecting Democrats for doing exactly that. The Democratic nominee running right is nothing new, but they keep losing!

Funnily enough, Republicans never seem to have to “run left” to win elections, McCain is the second most conservative voting senator yet gets described constantly as a moderate. The Republican genius is to keep talking so much about ultra-conservative ideas that the center moves in their direction. Democrats never fight this, they’re told that the “smart” thing is to move to the new center (no matter how artificial) and become kinder versions of those nice, electable Republicans.

People keep insisting that this is the “smart” thing to do, despite much of a record of success, despite the obvious danger if it’s allowed to progress any further. Obama just wants to win the election; Republicans are more concerned with changing the nature of the debate so it’s consistently more favourable to them. In the long run they still win, the democratic nominee in 2012 is likely to accept even more of Bush’s ultraconservative ideas as a given to try to distance themselves from what doubtless will be described as the most liberal government ever (despite its likely actual centrism) and we’ll be told again that this is genius!