SAINTLY IMAGE BECOMES TARNISHED

“Like it or not, the perception is growing that Team Obama is focusing on [Sarah] Palin as a clueless hockey mom from way up north and on [John] McCain as an old fogy. But that emphasis on sex and age doesn’t become a moralist, especially given Obama’s own siren warnings that his opponents might resort to racial attacks against him. Then there were Obama’s once-lofty progressive principles. Yet no Northern Democratic liberal like Obama has won the presidency in a half-century. So everyone knew that Obama sooner or later had to move to the center in the general election to win over independents. For the hope-and-change candidate, those natural readjustments now appear insincere and opportunistic—especially given that he had to move so far from the left to get to the middle. On campaign-finance reform, FISA, NAFTA, abortion, capital punishment, guns, Iran, Iraq, the surge, and drilling offshore, Obama has fudged on his earlier positions in the normal way of savvy pragmatists—but not in a manner befitting angelic idealists. The new Obama probably will recover from his temporary setback in the polls. But right now his problem is that disappointed independent voters are catching on that this saintly savior is all too human.” —Victor Davis Hanson