Sean King

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San Juan, Puerto Rico, United States

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Obama as Bizarro Bush?

Charles Krauthammer: In last week's column, I thought I had thoroughly chronicled Obama's brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles -- on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecom immunity for post-Sept. 11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started.

In so many ways, , Obama reminds me of the mirror image of George H. W. Bush. Though its hard to remember this fact given recent history, Bush was offered up to America, and particularly to his party, as a "compassionate conservative", someone who had a proven ability (as the much beloved Governor of Texas) to unite Democrats and Republicans and who, therefore, was uniquely qualified to end partisanship and restore civility in Washington. But eventually the truth came out: Bush was not a conservative, which infuriated those to his right, nor was he non-partisan or particularly compassionate, which alienated those on this left.

As his recent policy reversals demonstrate, Obama fits the same mold, though from the other side. He will infuriate those to his left because, despite all the primary season rhetoric, he will not leave Iraq, he will not end "domestic spying", he will not finance his campain in a "less corrupt" kind of way, he will not overturn NAFTA, and he won't do much of anything about handguns. And he will alienate those on his right because, as his ties with far left radicals like Ayers, Reverand Wright and George Soros make clear, he's not a bi-partisan uniter.

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