"Obama's virtues aside, it's politics as usual" by Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff | June 24, 2008
WASHINGTON - .... There was a time - just a few weeks ago, in fact - when Obama seemed to be challenging the electorate to look beyond superficial expressions of patriotism. He sometimes declined to wear a flag pin. But that got him tagged as unpatriotic, and now he's sounding the expected notes....
Yeah, we know and understand what that means (he's kissed Israel and corporate ass).
At the start of the general election campaign, many people believed Obama was so intent on showing his distaste for the usual political tropes - and his superiority to them - that he would go all the way to November with a message of Jimmy Carter-like pieties: hope, change, honesty.
The revelation of the past two weeks is that he's not taking that route. First he came out swinging against John McCain. Then, last week, he broke his promise to accept federal matching funds and adhere to the required spending limits....
Yeah, never all of McCain's equivocations and lies, Pete!
You guys are something!
But he didn't present his decision that way. He said he was opting out of a broken system, stressing that heavy spending by shadowy independent groups had rendered campaign-finance limits meaningless.
This is half-true in the best Bill Clinton tradition: Obama is right that independent groups have corrupted the system, but he's fooling himself if he thinks he's ducking the spending limits to strike a blow for honest, above-board campaigning.
Is that an INSULT or what?
More likely, he's ducking the limits because he wants to win - a fact that seems to be dawning on Democrats (to their delight) and Republicans (to their disgust). David Brooks, the
That may be true, but it's hard to spin a winning campaign out of pure virtue. McCain, after all, rose to fame as a truth-telling maverick, but then shifted gears to pacify his conservative critics.
That's it? That's ALL the "criticism" of McCain and his flip-flops?
He "shifted gears?"
Case closed, readers.
Canellos just made my point for me!!!
Type his name into my blog search for funsies!
He and Obama have maintained their integrity in other respects and still have the British newsmagazine The Economist gushing about how they represent the best of American politics.
But now they're playing to win, and suddenly it's hard to see why so many people expected anything different."
Especially when your head is up the Neo-Con ass, 'ey, Pete?
