Who is the real Obama?

Author: Rosa Maria Young

On June 3rd I wrote an article about Obama and his gaffes. Some people I know were not too happy about it and told me I should quit writing against Obama. After all they knew I certainly was not for McCain, so why give the Republicans more ammunition? I replied that first I was not giving ammunition to anybody, I was just being objective and saying what I believed to be true. Sure I want the Democrats to win, but I don’t want another four years like the last almost eight years. After Bush, it is a pleasure to hear somebody who can say a sentence in English we all can understand, but… there are many talented speakers, and even more talented readers of speeches and that does not make them material for the highest job in the land. I tried, I really did, to believe in the change Obama kept on talking about. There was something in him that did not convince me I could honestly go to the voting booth and cast my vote for him.

What was bothering me was his incredible push to want to be everything for everyone. At the beginning, in his speeches there was a background of blacks. He needed their votes. Fair enough. Then as the primaries advanced and Hillary Clinton started to get many of the white votes (women and elderly and poor workers) the scenario behind Obama became more white. And of course we all know what happened when two American Muslim women with head scarves were told to leave the places behind Obama. He could not afford to be “smeared” as being a Muslim, something already discussed on his website FightTheSmears.com. Now, if I was an American Muslim, I would be distressed that a candidate for the Presidency of my country will consider a personal smear if somebody were to call him a Muslim. But that is fodder or another article. Some people would consider that he was just acting like a politician. They all have to pander to some extent. I know, I don’t like it but I can maybe overlook it. What I find more difficult to accept is when one begins to pander or totally change directions about very important things at this point in time. Things like the Irak war, abortion, gun control and the death penalty.

On July 4th, I read an editorial in the NYT which among other things said:
“Senator Barack Obama stirred his legions of supporters, and raised our hopes, promising to change the old order of things… Now there seems to be a new Barack Obama on the hustings. First, he broke his promise to try to keep both major parties within public-financing limits for the general election… The new Barack Obama has abandoned his vow to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it includes an immunity clause for telecommunications companies that amounts to a sanctioned cover-up of Mr. Bush’s unlawful eavesdropping after 9/11.
In January, when he was battling for Super Tuesday votes, Mr. Obama said that the 1978 law requiring warrants for wiretapping, and the special court it created, worked. Now, he supports the immunity clause as part of what he calls a compromise but actually is a classic, cynical Washington deal that erodes the power of the special court, virtually eliminates “vigorous oversight” and allows more warrantless eavesdropping than ever. .. The Barack Obama of the primary season used to brag that he would stand before interest groups and tell them tough truths. The new Mr. Obama tells evangelical Christians that he wants to expand President Bush’s policy of funneling public money for social spending to religious-based organizations — a policy that violates the separation of church and state…
On top of these perplexing shifts in position, we find ourselves disagreeing powerfully with Mr. Obama on two other issues: the death penalty and gun control…We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.”

Now, I can hear many of you saying that this is just an editorial from the New York Times and remind me that the Times endorsed Hillary Clinton, etc. Sure then, let me tell you of my surprise when this morning I came across an article by Bob Herbert, and nobody who read his articles during the primaries could say he was anti-Obama.
Here is what he said:

“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…
So there he was in Zanesville, Ohio, pandering to evangelicals by promising not just to maintain the Bush program of investing taxpayer dollars in religious-based initiatives, but to expand it. Separation of church and state? Forget about it.
And there he was, in the midst of an election campaign in which the makeup of the Supreme Court is as important as it has ever been, agreeing with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas that the death penalty could be imposed for crimes other than murder. What was the man thinking?
There’s even concern that he’s doing the Obama two-step on the issue that has been the cornerstone of his campaign: his opposition to the war in Iraq. But the senator denied that any significant change should be inferred from his comment that he would “continue to refine” his policy on the war.”

I will rest my case with the hope that Obama knows what he is doing and we have not made a bad mistake. After all we should not be voting for the person who we feel better about but for the person who will straighten the country and will help its people. I am a little curious though about what he is thinking to do about universal health care if anything at all.