Obama's retreat to the center of cynicism

Michael Gerson:

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Whatever you think of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both earned a reputation for centrism by taking difficult political stands during (and before) the nomination process. While remaining orthodox on many key issues, each candidate contributed a new intellectual theory to his party. And the candidates forced Democratic and Republican ideologues to swallow a horse pill of centrism in the cause of victory.

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.

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This is the guy who used to argue that cynicism was the problem and now his cynical politics has exposed his inner cynic. It is typical of the Democrat politics of fraud which includes saying what ever you have to say to get power.

He had to run to the left in the primaries because the Democrat nut roots rejected Clinton's move to the center to win. That is what made the hard "pivot," aka flip-flop, necessary.

Will the left swallow their abandonment and accept the wink that Obama does not really mean what he is saying now? Will the votes in the center ignore the wink and put aside their doubts about his being a liberal wacko? That is what this election will turn on.

The Wall Street Journal in an editorial today says Obama is not just running to the center but fleeing to Bush policies he had previously rejected.