In his first ad of the post-primary season Obama exaggerated his legislative record and now in a second ad he continues to deceive.  We have already noted how he claims credit for welfare reform despite being against it (and exaggerates his role in implementing the policy) but it turns out Obama even lies about his own history:

Obama’s latest ad repeats an often-stated claim, saying he “worked his way through college and Harvard Law.” We know Obama took out loans to get himself through school. But the campaign provided information on just two jobs Obama had in those years, and they were both in the summer.

[. . .]

The ad begins with the announcer telling us that Obama “worked his way through college and Harvard Law.” Actually, Obama took out loans to get himself through college, as we heard in a 60-second ad his campaign began running last month. We don’t know how much assistance his family provided.

But “worked his way” through college and law school? The only back-up the campaign provided for this claim was a quote from Obama’s book “Dreams from My Father” having to do with a construction job he had one summer while he was in college, and an article mentioning his job as a summer associate one year at a big Chicago law firm. We asked campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor if Obama held jobs during the school year, or other summer jobs, but he said only, “He had the two jobs I told you about.” Unless Obama had a good bit more employment than his spokesman was able to describe for us, it’s a real stretch to claim he “worked his way” through school.

This guys resume is so thin he has to exaggerate his work in college!  And we all thought the Clintons were the audacious liars!

Tom Nevan at RCP posts a humorous exchange where he tries to get Obama surrogate Harold Ford to help define Obama’s political philosophy.  Not surprisingly he has no luck:

RCP: Congressman Ford, Senator Obama has tacked to the right recently on a few issues including public financing, FISA, and what not, and it’s led to some discussion about what he really believes. Paul Krugman in the New York Times today poses the question: is Obama a progressive who’s been posing as a centrist? Or is the opposite: is he really a centrist who’s been posing as a progressive for the primaries? What’s your answer to that question?

FORD: First of all, Tom, that’s a good question. I think two things. One, what Senator Obama has achieved in this campaign is something we’ve not seen, at least in the last 15, maybe 20 years in presidential politics. He’s been able to rise above a lot of these labels, he’s been able to transcend the kind of labeling that occurs even within the spectrum of a party. And I think there’s some frustration on the part of those who write about this.

[. . .]

RCP: But a lot of voters are trying to get to know who he [Obama] is at his core. And so the question again is: is he at an instinctual level - would you describe him as instinctually a progressive or instinctually as a centrist in his orientation and the way he approaches issues?

FORD: I would define him as a patriot, who wants badly to improve America’s standing around the globe and to make America - allow America to live up to everything we are and can be to every single American. I don’t know what you call that. But I call him the Democratic nominee, and on November 7 I look forward to calling him the President elect. Thank you all very much. 

Emphasis mine.  Whenever you hear this watch out, because it means the speaker is trying to pull a fast one.  Those who want to get past labels and transcend them really just don’t want to be pinned down by them.  Yes, we use labels in order to simplify complex subjects, but this is necessary in a complex world.  They may not be perfect but they are important to get a sense of where people see themselves coming from and how they might act in the future.

Obama seeks to rise above all this because he wants to his vaguely favorable perception as a way to attract voters who disagree with on critical issues.  To accept a label is to risk offending some group.  If he embraces the progressives like he did during the primary many moderates will be turned off (particularly by the angry and vulgar online left).  But if he portrays himself as a centrist - which he seems to be moving towards lately - he risks angering those activists who do so much of the work in a political campaign.

Obama prefers to keep things vague and pretend that he can unite us all - by being all things to all people - despite a very liberal voting record and history.  And this is dangerous because it hides his real positions and is bound to engender the very cynicism that he claims to be rising above.

Michael Gerson continues the theme of Obama’s dash to the center:

Barack Obama is now making his head-snapping shift to the center precisely because he rejected the Clinton-Bush approach. During the primaries, Obama could hardly be called innovative. His main policy appeals — higher taxes, the “renegotiation” of NAFTA, the filibuster of FISA to block “retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies,” public financing of presidential elections, a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, unconditional talks with every world dictator — were indistinguishable from those of many Net-roots bloggers. But while America is less Republican than it used it to be, it remains a center-right country. And so Obama has shifted, trimmed or retreated on nearly every issue that won him the nomination — trying to compress a lifetime of moderation into a fortnight.

All this requires its own kind of audacity. As Obama explained of his NAFTA switch, “Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.” There is a broad wink in this admission — a signal to the political class that Obama gets the political game. And commentators who buy the conventional wisdom — that all politicians excite the base, then move to the center — find these shifts expected, even impressive. They supposedly demonstrate a kind of political and mental toughness — the unsentimental skills of a poker player, which might come in handy during negotiations with the Russians or the Chinese.

There are many excuses for political opportunism, but it is not a virtue, because it eventually multiplies cynicism. And it may not even be a political advantage for a candidate who has made post-partisan idealism — rather than a policy vision — the centerpiece of his campaign. As Mitt Romney demonstrated in the Republican primaries, a strategy that smacks of cynicism can become a public image, which can overwhelm a strategy.

[. . .]

But it is hard to avoid the feeling that Obama has gained the nomination without fully earning it. Unlike Clinton or Bush, his intellectual contributions have been slight. The wave he rides may take him far — but he is not determining its direction.

I think Gerson’s instincts are right.  Obama has a history of spoting openings and exploiting them.  His personality and interpersonal skills, along with his ruthless ambition, have taken him on a lightening quick rise.  But because of this quick rise, and his lack of experience, he is left to improvise and ride the wave that has taken him this far.  Before he always looked for ways to add to his base of upscale liberals and African Americans to win in districts that favored this coalition.  Now he has to win a national election.  He is gambling that he can tact to the center without losing his base; that he can pick off enough voters who want change and don’t care that much about who carries that banner.

The risk is that by so obviously campaigning in this pragmatic and opportunistic way that he will undermine the “brand” or style that has taken him so far.  The danger is that once supporters realize that he really isn’t all that different from every other politician, except that he can give a great speech, they will resent his bait and switch and abandon him.  Only time will tell.

The Wall Street Journal ponders:

We’re beginning to understand why Barack Obama keeps protesting so vigorously against the prospect of “George Bush’s third term.” Maybe he’s worried that someone will notice that he’s the candidate who’s running for it.

Most Presidential candidates adapt their message after they win their party nomination, but Mr. Obama isn’t merely “running to the center.” He’s fleeing from many of his primary positions so markedly and so rapidly that he’s embracing a sizable chunk of President Bush’s policy. Who would have thought that a Democrat would rehabilitate the much-maligned Bush agenda?

[. . .]

All of which prompts a couple of thoughts. The first is that Mr. Obama doesn’t seem to think American political sentiment has moved as far left as most of the media claim. Another is that the next President, whether Democrat or Republican, is going to embrace much of Mr. Bush’s foreign and antiterror policy whether he admits it or not. Think Eisenhower endorsing Truman’s Cold War architecture.

Most important is the matter of Mr. Obama’s political character – and how honest he is being about what he truly believes. His voting record in the Senate and in Illinois, as well as his primary positions, would make him the most liberal Presidential candidate since George McGovern in 1972. But he clearly doesn’t want voters to believe that in November. He’s still the Obama Americans don’t know.

Yep.  This is what I have been saying.  His ambition has overcome whatever principles he had.  He wants to win so he has decided to abandon his liberalism in as many symbolic/cost free ways as possible and figure out how to govern after the election. 

The question is whether he can get away with it.

Check out this radio ad:

Is that not an ad explicitly promoting Obama because of his faith?  Where is the media outrage?  I thought they were against this sort of thing?

Obama can campaign on his faith and reach out to religious voters in any way he chooses and you never hear a peep out of the media about theocracy.  Democrats can campaign in churches like they do all the time and the media says nothing.  Any time a Republican gets near religion and it is a scandal.

Just another advantage Obama has from his friends in the media.

The Washington Post has an article discussing Obama’s home loan which he apparently got a good deal on.  But it doesn’t really seem like there is anything to indicate he got special treatment.  But I did find it interesting that given the chance, thanks to their fast growing income, the Obama’s went upscale on their new home:

When the Obamas secured the loan, their income had risen dramatically. Obama assumed his Senate seat in January 2005, with an annual salary of $162,100. That same month, Random House agreed to reissue an Obama memoir, for which it originally paid $40,000, as part of a $2.27 million deal that included two future nonfiction books and a children’s book.

Around the same time, the University of Chicago Hospitals promoted Michelle Obama to a vice president and more than doubled her pay, to $317,000.

The couple wanted to step up from their $415,000 condo. They chose a house with six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a four-car garage and 5 1/2 baths, including a double steam shower and a marble powder room. It had a wine cellar, a music room, a library, a solarium, beveled glass doors and a granite-floored kitchen.

All that for a family of four.  Nice.  Obama has come a long way from community organizer I guess . . .

Richard Collins tackled this subject earlier, but James Kirchick does a good job of driving the point home:

The only obstacle between Barack Obama and the presidency is the mountain of smears that will no doubt come his way. That’s the narrative that Obama supporters — and his swooning chroniclers in the mainstream media — would have us believe.

Obama himself set up a website, fighthesmears.com, correcting some e-mail chain letters that allege he “can’t produce his birth certificate,” is “secretly a Muslim” and that he “won’t say the Pledge of Allegiance.” In May, Newsweek published a cover story confirming the Obama campaign’s fears, declaring that “the Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968.”

Writers Evan Thomas and Richard Wolfe concluded that the 2008 presidential election will be no different. “It is a sure bet that the GOP will try to paint Obama as ‘the other’ — as a haughty black intellectual who has Muslim roots (Obama is a Christian) and hangs around with America-haters.”

But has it been a “sure bet?”

Not really. Thus far, no one with any serious affiliation to John McCain’s campaign has resorted to the alleged “scare” tactics in which Republicans — and, apparently, only Republicans — have been perfecting since Richard Nixon was first elected. On the contrary, if the past few months have showed us anything, it’s that the Obama campaign is the one dealing in crude smears.

[. . .]

Nevertheless, the fears of Obama supporters that their candidate lies eternally vulnerable to GOP smears exists only in their fevered imaginations. The evidence of dirty Republican tricks has been utterly absent this campaign season. And if anyone has tried to smear Barack Obama in the way that Thomas, Wolfe and other Democratic partisans allege, it was not the Republican National Committee, but rather Hillary Rodham Clinton and her surrogates. In February, the Drudge Report claimed that the Clinton campaign circulated photos of Obama in a traditional East African turban and robe, with the message that the images showed him “dressed.” Asked if there was any truth to the smear that Obama is a Muslim, she infamously replied, “As far as I know,” it wasn’t the case. After the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, she said the results showed that “Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.”

The belief that “the Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968” is a comforting salve for Democrats. After all, it’s much easier for them to demonize conservatives than consider that the reason for their electoral defeats may lie with liberal ideas. Please don’t take that as a “smear.”

Dominic Lawson takes a look at Obama’s recent spate of centrist spinning:

“I find comfort in the fact that the longer I’m in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience.”

 

Thus spake Barack Obama. These words appear at the conclusion of the chapter entitled “Politics” in Obama’s 2006 book The Audacity of Hope. They also sum up much of what we now know about Obama: a man of stunning articulacy, but also stunning self-regard.

Both characteristics have been indispensable in powering the first-term Illinois senator to the very brink of the presidency. Now, however, some of those who were most captivated by Obama’s perorations about his unflinching conscience are feeling distinctly queasy: in the brief weeks since forcing Hillary Clinton to concede, he has made them wonder what, actually, distinguishes his politics from those of the Clintons at their most ruthlessly pragmatic.

[. . .]

Those who actually supported Obama during this process now divide neatly, if unevenly, into two groups. The first, smaller, group is full of buyer’s remorse. The blogosphere is hissing like a catherine wheel with their anger with Obama, obviously, but above all with themselves. The second, much bigger group, continues to buy Obama’s story. They argue that everything and anything is justified if it helps to get a Democrat back in the White House; some of them add that “of course” Obama doesn’t believe any of the things he is now saying to woo the “redneck states” and that once in the White House he will revert to his “true beliefs”.

To this group we must address a simple question. How do you know what Obama really believes in, other than his own destiny – and, of course, his conscience?

Good question.

Francis Cianfrocca offers a helpful clarification regarding Obama’s seeming contradictory statements and positions lately:

With the single exception of expanded drilling for oil, Senator Obama is in favor of every policy position that is recognizably conservative, and he has been since the beginning of his public career.

This includes: gun control (against it), gay marriage (against it), faith-based initiatives (for ‘em), the Iraq war (in favor of victory and a continued presence), public financing of political campaigns (against it), the death penalty for rapists (for it), lower taxes (for ‘em), and the flag of the United States (for it).

The Senator has not yet announced his long-held and consistent position on abortion, but he does think the conservative Supreme Court is doing a darned fine job.

All characterizations of Senator Obama’s consistently-held positions as “liberal” or “left-of-center” are either unfortunate misrepresentations by political opponents (which he regrets), or legitimate misunderstandings caused by hurried or inartful statements by himself or his associates (which he also regrets).

Hope that helps . . .

Peter Wehner has figured it out:

With each passing day, it seems, the original conceit of the Obama candidacy–that he is an agent of “change” who will “turn the page” on the “old politics” and act as a uniquely unifying figure in American politics–looks more and more absurd. He turns out to be an exceptionally skilled and ambitious politician who uses the old playbook even as he pretends to have discarded it. It’s a neat trick if you can get away with it.

What brought on this epiphany?  Gay marriage:

Senator Barack Obama has announced his opposition to a California ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriages–a decision that was forced on the citizens of California by the state’s Supreme Court. In a letter expressing his support for extending “fully equal rights and benefits to same-sex couples under both state and federal law,” Obama wrote that he opposes “the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states.”

Why is it that Obama, who promises to be “post-polarizing” figure, is using this issue to attack the motivations and integrity of those with whom he disagrees? This is the embodiment of the kind of politics we were told Obama stands against. If Obama believes same-sex unions are the right position, let him make his arguments. But to portray those who want to preserve the traditional meaning of marriage–particularly in response to an imperial court’s efforts to reshape our culture–as “divisive and discriminatory” is itself divisive and deeply unfair. It is an effort to sideline an important discussion of the issue by branding the advocates of traditional marriage as bigoted.

[. . .]

On a substantive level: Senator Obama now opposes the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Clinton; the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy; and an effort by the citizens of California to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. We will see if the McCain campaign deems this issue worthy of debate and their attention–and if so, whether, and to what degree, this issue helps or hurts Obama. He has now taken a position that strikes me as fairly extreme: same-sex marriages ought to be imposed by the courts, even if the citizens of that state object–thereby making an already-contentious social issue even more contentious. (One of the reasons abortion has been such a disruptive and unsettled issue in American politics is that the Supreme Court, in manufacturing a “fundamental right” to abortion, decided it was a topic in which the will of the people and their representatives was simply irrelevant.) And if the citizens of California, or any other state, attempt to restore marriage to its time-honored definition, they are not merely wrong; they are by definition agents of division and discrimination.

The way to understand how Obama works is to first understand that he uses style and charm to hide the fact that he is a run of the mill leftist.  He uses his significant social interaction and speaking skills to portray himself as a calm, understanding, and non-threating figure.  Much of what he says is vague platitudes or even contradictory but it comes off sounding understanding and moderate.  He makes people feel comfortable around him and believe that he listens to their concerns.

But underneath this is a driving ambition and a traditional big government liberalism.  So Obama ruthlessly takes positions he feels he needs to in order to win and then looks to charm his way through the contradictions and calm any angry supporters upset by his tactics.

Everyone points to his intelligence but Obama brings nothing new or interesting to the debate in terms of substance or policy.  Outside of the Harvard Law Review his career is pedestrian and thin (how many state senators have a background in either law or community work?  I bet you could find hundreds or thousands with nearly indentical resumes).  What Obama brings is his own unique persona and his situation in time and place.  His intelligence is used to project an image and leverage that image for all it is worth.  This is obviously a skill but not neccesarily a presidential one; or one that speaks to great character.

I defy anyone to highlight an actual instance of real leadership where Obama bucked his backers or his party to do something he really believed in and at a political cost.  Can anyone name an area of policy or politics where Obama brings more than just rhetoric or style; where he offers specific and real change?

No.  Obama is the perfect symbol of style over substance.  What the campaign has revealed since he became the presumptive nominee is that he was much better at saying what the liberal Democratic base wanted to hear - added to the fact that they wanted to move past the Clintons - than he is at communicating a consistent and coherent message for the general election.  As he attempts to placate the left and feint toward the center the Obama brand is looking a little thin; a little less new and different every dayand more and more like the same old thing with a shinier package.

Nothing about Obama makes me think he is anything other than a committed liberal who wants to use the power of government to control people’s lives in the name of solving their problems.  These policy changes and massaging of Obama’s record are simply what Obama thinks he has to do to win.  And Obama has always been committed to winning no matter what the cost.

Obama continues to morph from the great liberal hero to a standard centrist politician before our very eyes:

Obama’s transformation from opponent to champion of welfare reform is the latest in a series of moves to the center. Since capturing the Democratic nomination, Obama has altered his stances on Social Security taxes, meeting with rogue leaders without preconditions, and the constitutionality of Washington, D.C.’s, sweeping gun ban.

The shift in Obama’s rhetoric on welfare reform has proceeded in stages. When Clinton was poised to sign welfare reform while running for re-election in 1996, Obama called it “disturbing.” A decade later, as an underdog running for president against Clinton’s wife, he spent 2007 avoiding the subject. By the time Obama emerged as the Democratic frontrunner in the spring of 2008, he began leaving the impression that he was for it all along. 

None of this is surprising to the cynics among us.  All politicians attempt to appease the base in the primary and appeal to the center in the general, but Obama wasn’t supposed to be your typical politician.  He was the candidate who could win a great victory for liberalism; who could use his rhetorical skills to become the left’s Reagan; change the political landscape and rebirth the liberal majority.

But in the last few weeks it is clear he simply doesn’t believe he can get elected running on the full throated liberalism of the primaries and so he has begun to attempt to change into a centrist Democrat.  He campaigned against this very style and substance when Hillary was his opponent - which is what ticked off Bill so much since the former president embodied this strategy - and yet now he is adopting it.

You may think this is shrewd politics, but what does it say about Obama that he can twist his words and record so quickly in an attempt to have it both ways?  Is this what his worshiping admirers signed on for?  To follow just another politician who can massage his positions and change his opinion in the matter of a few weeks?  Doesn’t seem like idealistic new politics to me.

This point is particularly important because Obama’s experience is so thin.  His ambition has led him to seek the next rung on the ladder almost immediately upon achieving office.  People don’t know him and don’t have a long career to judge him on.  Trust and judgment have been his watch words.  But if you can’t trust him to stick to his positions or his promises than he is just another slick politician who happens to give great speeches. 

If I were an Obama supporter I would be worried.  Did they really sign on to get Bill Clinton without the executive experience (and without the women problems)?  Seems to me what the Obama folks are getting is a lot of changing positions and a lot less hope that Obama is different.

It looks like Obama is going to have to poke a stick in the eye of the netroots on yet another issue.  Iraq:

With the general election four months away, Obama’s rhetoric on the topic now seems outdated and out of touch, and the nominee-apparent may have a political problem concerning the very issue that did so much to bring him this far.

But never fear, the messiah is not the idealistic change agent he appears to be:

Obama, whatever the idealistic yearnings of his admirers, has turned out to be a cold-eyed, shrewd politician. The same pragmatism that prompted him last month to forgo public financing of his campaign will surely lead him, if he becomes President, to recalibrate his stance on Iraq. He doubtless realizes that his original plan, if implemented now, could revive the badly wounded Al Qaeda in Iraq, reënergize the Sunni insurgency, embolden Moqtada al-Sadr to recoup his militia’s recent losses to the Iraqi Army, and return the central government to a state of collapse. The question is whether Obama will publicly change course before November. So far, he has offered nothing more concrete than this: “We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in.”

Obama has had countless chances to offer a more flexible or pragmatic approach to changing conditions on the ground in Iraq.  But in the primary he needed those anti-votes badly.  Now we will see just how smooth Obama can be in changing his position on yet another critical issue. 

It will also be interesting to see if the activist left online tolerates continued shifting to the center.  They thought they had their candidate, the guy who would run as a  loud and proud progressive, but it seems Obama is too ambitious to risk running as an avowed leftist in a general election. 

I guess the emphasis has shifted from change to hope - hope he doesn’t really mean whatever he has to say to get elected . . .

The Obama campaign has officially declared that we are a part of “Smears Inc” which is Obama’s version of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:

“England for Obama” - whatever that means - picks up the ball and runs with it:

The list includes Craig Shirley who owns the website Stop-him-now.com a right-wing scare-fest which includes articles such as ‘Obama’s sham Christianity‘ and ‘Actual communist endorses Obama’.

A “right-wing scare-fest” - I like it.

BTW, those responsible for putting this list together might want to consider checking their interns work.  Craig Shirley is a pretty scary guy (despite having founded, run and coached in the Ft. Hunt Youth Lacrosse League in Virginia which gave lacrosse skills to thousands of young boys and girls) but that doesn’t mean he “owns” or “runs” Stop-Him-Now.  A few clicks on the Google would have made that clear. 

That’s not just my opinion but the Boston Globe’s:

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama’s former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

Shockingly it all comes back to friends and money:

Among those tied to Obama politically, personally, or professionally are:

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.

Allison Davis, a major fund-raiser for Obama’s US Senate campaign and a former lead partner at Obama’s former law firm. Davis, a developer, was involved in the creation of Grove Parc and has used government subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,500 units in Chicago, including a North Side building cited by city inspectors last year after chronic plumbing failures resulted in raw sewage spilling into several apartments.

Antoin “Tony” Rezko, perhaps the most important fund-raiser for Obama’s early political campaigns and a friend who helped the Obamas buy a home in 2005. Rezko’s company used subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,000 apartments, mostly in and around Obama’s district, then refused to manage the units, leaving the buildings to decay to the point where many no longer were habitable.

Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers - including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko - collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama’s campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at least $200,000, by Obama’s own accounting.

One of those contributors, Cecil Butler, controlled Lawndale Restoration, the largest subsidized complex in Chicago, which was seized by the government in 2006 after city inspectors found more than 1,800 code violations.

[. . .]

And although he has distanced himself from Rezko, Obama has remained close to others in the development community. Jarrett participates in the campaign’s senior staff meetings. And Obama chose another close friend, Martin Nesbitt, as his campaign treasurer. Nesbitt is chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority, one of the key overseers of the shift toward private management and development.

Read the whole article.  It is damning.  Close friends, critical campaign fundraisers, and important supporters make a bunch of money off of government subsidized housing projects while the projects themselves fall into disrepair and the tenants suffer.  Obama claims to know nothing about all this money being wasted and his friends bilking the system. Instead of development and growth it is just another story of Chicago politics where the powerful and connected make money and poor people are left to suffer; where the government pours more and more money into projects with the same results.  This is hope and change?  This is Obama’s home turf.  This is supposedly one of his passions.

And yet look what the people working on this issue are left to say:

Jamie Kalven, a longtime Chicago housing activist, put it this way: “I hope there is not much predictive value in his history and in his involvement with that community.”

They are left to hope that Obama’s rhetoric has more meaning than his actual actions and history.  This is a recipe for disappointment.

Ignore his words and look at his record.  That is the only way we can avoid a repeat at the national level where the stakes are even higher.

Looks like John McCain isn’t the only one getting the run around from Obama on townhall meetings:

Scheduling for an event to have Sen. Barack Obama make an appearance before several tribes and Indians has turned problematic.

Before the Illinois senator became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, he made a pledge to Kalyn Free, founder of the Indigenous Democratic Network, that he would appear at a tribally focused town hall-style meeting. Initial logistics of the agreement called on him to speak at a reservation or Indian-owned venue somewhere in the Southwest before the Democratic National Convention in August if he became his party’s candidate.

Obama’s verbal promise was seen as key among influential Indian political activists, and it played a factor for some Native individuals who threw their support behind his candidacy. The promise even partially influenced the decision of at least one of the four Native superdelegates who will attend the DNC to cast their votes for him. All four Native superdelegates, including Free, have verbally pledged their support to the senator from Illinois.

Now that Obama has all but secured his party’s nomination after a contentious battle throughout the spring with Sen. Hillary Clinton, scheduling the event has become something of a logistical nightmare.

The Obama campaign has told Free that the senator can only provide two weeks’ notice regarding when and where he would be able to participate in an Indian-focused event.

[. . .]

Free said that some tribal members she’s queried about the two-week window have found the Obama campaign’s position to be ”disrespectful.” She also thinks it’s important for the event to be held in the summer, since Obama’s time will likely be even more pressed after the convention in the time leading up to the November general election.

Rey Kitchkumme, vice chair of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, is but one of many tribal officials who had been looking forward to the event, but he is now disappointed with the inflexible position of the Obama campaign. He feels the issue is a matter of the Obama campaign needing to be more respectful of tribal operations and governance.

You don’t suppose Obama would say one thing to get nominated and then change his mind?

The supposedly eloquent and blindingly intelligent candidate is apparently afraid to stand in front of people and answer questions (despite the fact that he claims to love townhall meetings).  And he is also too busy to keep his promises. 

Hope and change my foot.  This is just politics as usual.