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From The Sunday Times
July 6, 2008

Obama’s cunning capture of the centre ground

Slowly and subtly, Barack Obama is wiping out every reason to vote for McCain

Andrew Sullivan

It is a telling sign of where American politics is now headed that last week several leading conservative voices proclaimed Barack Obama had seen the conservative light and many leading liberal voices accused him of being a sellout.

At one extreme, The Wall Street Journal bizarrely claimed that Obama was now running for George W Bush’s third term. On the other, liberal blogger Arianna Huffington accused him of making a “very serious mistake” by agreeing to a new wire-tapping law. And leading left-wing blogger Markos Moulitsas accused Obama of “unnecessary stabbing” of political allies. Neither side, I’d say, is right – the truth is more muddy. However, if you want proof that Obama is one of the shrewdest – as well as one of the most inspiring – politicians in recent history, last week is hard to refute.

Obama began it with a full-throated defence of patriotism, in front of two large American flags, invoking his white family and its history of military service. He went out of his way to praise General David Petraeus and to condemn the attack by the antiwar group Moveon.org on him as “General Betray Us”.

Obama went on the next day to brazenly coopt one of Bush’s signature policy innovations, funnelling public money to the social services of religious organisations. He ended the week by dropping his previous long-held position on a fixed timetable for withdrawal from Iraq in favour of a “re-fined” strategy of withdrawal as soon as prudently possible after consultations with generals on the ground.

All of this caps a flurry of small adjustments in the postprimary phase. We now know that Obama can live with mass wire-tapping to gain antiterror intelligence, as long as it is placed under congressional law and oversight in ways Bush tried to avoid. He was fine about the Supreme Court’s defence of gun rights in the recently decided Dick Heller case (in which a Washington DC security guard argued for his right to carry a gun to protect himself); he supported the death penalty in some extreme cases such as child rape; he ran an ad touting his own role (much exaggerated) on welfare reform; and he also plans to avoid any tax hikes on the middle class while adding some strong fiscal medicine to the well-to-do.

For good measure he was the only candidate last week with ads being broadcast on Christian radio. Yes, it was an independent group placing the ad, but its evocation of Obama’s conversion to Christianity was a bold foray into deep Republican territory.

When you examine all of these adjustments, they are not quite the bald reversals the extreme partisans on both sides are claiming. Obama’s position on Iraq, for example, has always been framed around the formula that the US should be “as careful getting out as we were careless getting in”.

His pledge of a fixed timetable for withdrawal was always going to be subject to empirical shifts on the ground in Iraq. Being careful does not mean sticking to fixed withdrawal plans regardless of reality. And as the primary season lengthened and the situation in Iraq turned surprisingly brighter, Obama found himself locked into a fast-calcifying position.

His policy was bound to become more complicated, as his former foreign policy adviser Samantha Power blurted out earlier this year. And by conceding a “refinement” of his policy the day before the July 4 holiday, Obama avoided short-term attacks on his policy “flip-flop” while making a necessary adjustment.

And there’s a point to the successive shifts: Obama is slowly undermining every conceivable reason to vote for Republican candidate John McCain. If you want to withdraw from Iraq – as prudently as possible – Obama is still your man. You now know though that he won’t risk chaos in a precipitous withdrawal regardless of the strategic and tactical situation. He will not, in other words, be susceptible to snatching defeat from the jaws of progress. Unlike McCain he is also unafraid of real diplomacy with Iran and Syria; and unlike McCain he does not threaten a hundred years of occupation in Iraq and the suspicion that he’d like the US to stay there for ever.

What can McCain say now in response? All he can say, I think, is that Obama is cynical. However, it is a little difficult to have spent the entire year portraying Obama as a radical, soft-on-terror leftist and now pivot to accuse him of being like the Clintons.

Obama, after all, is not running for Bush’s third term, but he is running after Bush’s two terms. In the brutally real world, he cannot undo the Iraq invasion. He cannot ignore the pressing need for good intelligence gained through wire-tapping after 9/11. He cannot ignore Tehran’s malevolence, while being more open to diplomacy than McCain is.

What the smarter foreign policy conservatives have long sensed in Obama is not a knee-jerk leftie, but a cool, cunning liberal strategist who could be a potent weapon for the West in the war on terror. Obama will inherit Bush’s war apparatus and it is not in his nature to dismiss all of it as useless until he has a grip on what’s working in a dynamic world. He is not going to surrender to Iran either, but he has a much better chance of wielding soft power as well as hard power in trying to avoid another conflict in the Middle East than McCain. He also has a chance to bring the American public with him – an attribute that Bush hasn’t had in his diplomatic arsenal for years.

None of this even faintly surprises me. The picture of Obama as a big-time leftist was always wrong – and more a function of the Clintons’ need to marginalise him than of any accurate portrayal of his record. His 2002 speech against the Iraq war aired a prescient worry about unintended consequences, not a deep reluctance to use military force in any circumstances.

Obama has long been a committed Christian, even of a more liberal, mainstream variety than the Republican leadership. His embrace of faith-based programmes is therefore utterly unsurprising to anyone who knows him. (The one key difference between Bush’s faith-based programmes and Obama’s is that Obama’s forbids religious charities from using public money to discriminate in hiring on the basis of faith.)

Obama also explicitly favoured the death penalty for child rapists and murderers in his book The Audacity of Hope. These are not, for the most part, U-turns or manifestations of cynicism. They are pragmatic adjustments made by a Democrat who wants to win.

This election will be about who can deliver the most change in a way that least disturbs an anxious electorate. McCain reassures in as much as he is obviously not a simple heir to Bush and Dick Cheney. But his refusal to countenance any tax increases or entitlement cuts in a debt-laden America, and his visceral hostility to diplomacy and nuance in the politics of the Middle East, worry many who have been rattled by the reckless rigidity of the Bush years.

Obama’s main liability has always been that he may be too inexperienced for an America at war and too culturally different from heartland America to win it over. In the past few weeks he has done a much better job in removing his liabilities than McCain has. This election, unlike the past two, will be won in the centre. It’s a centre in which Obama looks increasingly at home.

I can't possibly trust Obama - a man who hasn't done anything but groom himself for political gain. He's a preacher,not a leader, and I don't vote for preachers.

Joanne Kern, seattle, US

What's "cunning" is your use of a "loaded" word like cunning to describe Obamas actions.....some bias showing, eh??!!?? When you folks get rid of all those surveillance cameras filming all those citizen desperadoes, you may critique Obamas ethos. What was Blair doing in bed w/Bush??!!??

dick hayes, Walnut Creek, CA, USA

Obama clearly said he would refine, not re-define his position. There is a world of difference. Refine means to purify, distill or explain in greater detail. Re-define would imply actual change. Why are so many smart people acting like they don't understand simple english? Pandering politics.

Dale, Fairfield CT, USA

Obama is flipping like a fish on hot astroturf.

The man does not have...A CLUE as to how to run the country. Someone else is calling his shots. He is very well spoken but at the same time he has no substance. He is just another empty suit in politics.

John, Dallas,

Very rapidly, Obama is wiping out any reason to vote for Obama.

Beau, Allentown, USA

Success in Iraq will be the end of Obama

AG, Tulsa, USA

Colin Coghlan,

If you want to know what Obama has don, use "the Google". It's very easy.

DeVon, Astoria, USA

The only difference between today and one year ago, or maybe even two or three, is that Barack Obama is a household name. However, what is definately the same today as it was one, two or three years ago is that we don't know what he has done. Or maybe we do, he has done nothing.

Colin Coghlan, Ramsey, NJ, USA

The issue of Indo-US Civil Nuclear Deal is being handled in India as a game of Ice-Water as played by small children.

Amey Kulkarni, Pune, India

And if I was standing at the beginning of time, and the Almighty said to me, "Jimmy C, which age would you like to live in?". I would take my mental flight to this 1st ½ of the 21st Century, and I would watch the USA become great again under the cool leadership of President Obama!
MLK paraphrased.

Jimmy C, Letchworth, UK

Watch out for "Blair Obama"

Tony brizzolara, Charleston , U.S.A. & UK

Reis Kash wrote: "He is one cynical politician who will say or do anything." As opposed to...? John McCain's a guy who's flip-flopped on everything he ever believed in: Bush tax cuts, torture, immigration, campaign finance reform. Google "McCain Resurrected" ...you want HIS finger on the button?

Craig McDonald, Michigan, USA

One has to be impressed by the team that Obama has gathered for his campaign; the biggest difference betweenthe two candidates is that Obama has chosen skilled and dedicated people. McCain's is a shambles. His team specialises in the revolving door, oops, another one gone for dodgy background!

Mary Meagher, Oxford, United Kingdom

More slavish Obama loving drivel from the media. He starts flip-flopping and out comes a piece like this saying how wise and clever he is. Remember he wanted a new type of politics? Turns out to be no different- just tells everybody what they want to hear. Mr Sullivan you insult our intelligence.

cb, rio, brazil

"He cannot ignore the pressing need for good intelligence gained through wire-tapping after 9/11"

So in order to gain some intelligence, it's ok to wiretap pretty much every single Americans phone line?

This isn't individual wiretaps, you realise that, right? This is mass surveillance.

Owen, London, UK

Inexperienced? Then why did he know better than to invade Iraq? Doesn't have a long record in the Senate? His short record reveals he has enough to join with the Republicans (McCain himself) to enact important legislation. Doesn't know what he's doing in the MidEast? Not according to my Arab family.

Krista, London, UK

I use to respect Andrew when he seemed to be a rational voice in the conservative world. Now that he is a liberal who believes what a politician says but not what he does I can't help but think he has lost his mind.

Mark, NY, USA

Senator Obama has become the consumate politician ,he does want to win after all. It's pretty much resembles following a career. When one begins, concentration is "local"immediate surroundings,if that goes well, the circle widens, responsabilities increase and more people are watching and judging.

simone, Geneva,

Senator Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. He has been very clear about who he is and what he stands for from the begining of his campaign. We are ONE nation. It's time to take a stand and reclaim our country.

Annette Miller, Las Vegas, US

Nobody here in the States seem to understand that Obama's candidacy, is about all Americans working together, to solve the problems facing our country and the world. Most people are still stuck in the polarizing politics of the last thirty years. Hurrah for Obama he's a breath of fresh air.

Phillip Swinehart, Grand Rapids, USA

He seems to be doing a great job...and that's a good thing.

Diana, Minneapolis,

The answer to the world of wine competition is Australia (The Times Saturday,5th July 2008

Betty Pickard, Rugby, UK

Isn't it about time to update the bio pic? I kind of cringe whenever I come to this page. That picture has to be 15 years old. I don't think Sullivan is a vain guy. They should put an up-to-date picture of him here.

Eric, San Francisco, USA

he appears to follow FDR in style
where it leads - we shall see

glenn schaefer, hollbrook , ny/usa

McCain is being completely outmanipulated by Obama's team. And how many of you armchair patriots have children or grandchildren on their second, third or fourth tours in Iraq? If you really want to get the job done, then let's reinstitute the draft and you get in line first! Do you have the guts?

David, Towson, MD,

McCain will win by the largest landslide in modern times.

Xixi, Alexandria, VA, USA

Obama is unproven, he hasn't accomplished anything significant in the senate. He has ties with questionable people in Chicago and elsewhere. And he is a socialist. The hypocrisy of the liberal MSM is incredible. Bush was ravaged for his faith-based program, but the same media is beaming for OHBs

steve, atlanta, usa

"My gut doesn't trust Obama, I don't see a leader, I hear a good talker."

Obama is the most trusted politician since the Kennedy's. This guy has a heart of gold. And wants what is best for America, both at home and abroad.

I don't trust a McCain who graduated 894th out of a class of 899.

LA, Maryland, U.S.

My gut doesn't trust Obama, I don't see a leader, I hear a good talker. None of the candidates have verbalized any type of plans or process to deal with all of the problems Americans face. I would like to ask any candidate to give us their definition of, "What is the job of the President"?

Jerry, AuGres, USA

McCain is just too old, period. It's one thing to campaign and make speeches, quite another to suffer 4 years of the pressure of the Presidency, especially in very hard times. Take your pension, McCain and leave it to younger candidates.

Colin, shrewsbury,

Any conservative who believes that Obama "has seen the light" is a credulous fool.

In the YouTube era, it's far more difficult than in the past for a politician to flim-flam the public in this manner. Obama's statements during the primary (which I believe reflect his true beliefs) will haunt him.

Mike Long, Arlington, MA, USA

I'm not sure about Obama since he had that fund raiser to assist Hillary with her campaign debt. It was an obvious bribe agreed on when they met that Tues. evening - I thought he was his "own man" until he refused to vote No & voice strongly his opposition to the ISP protecton act.

Lance, Tampa, USA

I can think of one very good reason to not vote for Obama. He is an inexperienced senator who represents the opposite of everything the founders of this country first brought forth. Obama is a Marxist! Enough said ...

LWagner, Orlando, USA

Obama is sounding more and more like a Communist with his 'JFKish' ramblings, he ain't no JFK, and sounds more like the goverment officials in 'Starship Troopers', "Service Means Citizenship...". Scary!!!

P M, Arvada, United States Of America

What has Obama done that gives any indication that he could be a good president of the United States of America?
Would you put a quarterback with one year of high school football experience in the Super Bowl?
Let him come back in 8 or 12 yrs after showing us who he is and what he can do.

Norm Mitchell, Hemet, USA

Gee Reis, a politician appealing to his base in the primaries and shifting to the center for the general election - is that so surprising? You call that cynical; I call that a recipe for victory. It's about time Democrats had someone in there who knows how the game is played. Good luck to him.

Mark Owen, New York,

today the best newspaper in the world got better.6/7/08.

alexander noble, peterhead, albania

Really?
I am not voting for Obama.

Pam, Sheridan, USA

Obama is not a "messiah" and is nothing more than a packaged politician, being propped up by the radical left. He has been and and will always be a product of the left.
Any attempt to fool traditional conservative voters, will fail.

Mike H, Nashville TN, USA

Andrew,
I'd say the biggest problem aside from the purity patrol of the left, is the outright bias of the media for McSprinkles. They do not make any attempt to hide this but, now are twisting what Obama has long said to make it sound like he is flipping and setting him up for the rightwing attacks

diane lake, machesney park, usa

If Obama isn't the perfect, flawless canidate then some Americans say to hell with him.
But there is no such thing as a "perfect" canidate. What this country needs is less arrogance in the white house and more common sense, working together....or say hello to the worlds new super power...China...

Eric, Denver, USA

McCain the pensioner couple might seem boring compared
to the showbiz Obama couple, but in a world increasingly
unsafe, McCain is a safe pair of hands at the head of a very
experienced Republican Party, with a strong experienced
military. With Condoleeza Rice as vice-President they should
win.

Tom, Northampton, England

Obama is just another shill politician who is making it perfectly clear to Americans with any wit that their audacity to hope will be crushed, as if to say: I dare ya, I double dare ya.

Charles Smyth, Belfast, Northern Ireland

In a word, he and his advisers are brilliant, simply brilliant. This IS change we can believe in, and a refusal to play the old style politics of polarization.

Books Moore, West Palm Beach, USA

What is not said is that at this stage there are only 5% points between the two candidtates. the red-neck vote - whilst not behing MacCain would vote for him rather than the prospect of a Balck Democrat int eh White-house. And that is why the election is too close to call.

timothy Murray, London, United Kingdom

So what you're saying is that you're glad Obama has no core values or principles and that's a good thing because now he can win the election and lead the nation.

He needs to say anything, betray anyone and do anything to get elected.

You and I have a very different idea of what makes a good political leader Andrew Sullivan.

Bison, granada hills, usa

The little brown cub scout will never win against McCain. It's a testament to the shallow thinking dems in America that he is even in the election. What were the dems thinking: Hillary or Hussein Obama? Brilliant.

John, Houston, USA

I would add that if you check the AP and New York Times the past few days you see them selling a ginned up, fake story on Obama and Iraq and have been trashing him for a week straight now.
The media is already being good lapdogs and starting to swiftboat the man.

diane lake, machesney park, usa

Reis Kash, another of the tiresome Hillbots still wallowing in their bitterness and self pity, huh?

diane lake, machesney park, usa

There is a huge difference between cynical and smart. It's about time the Democrats started playing a more sophisticated game. If he's this clever, then we do need him. Fellow Americans, please, stop wanting the big love affair - we are in serious trouble. For once, let's go with smart.

Severin, London,

Obama is being extremely clever--as he always has been--about saying what Americans want to hear in a way that makes it truly his own. The key question is, will he deliver on promises such as a less-corporate-influenced government--or will he even be able to?

Bruce Boyers, Glendale, California, USA

Having captured the Democrat nomination by a shameless appeal to the far left (the element which dominates Democrat party machinery), Obama is now going for the "center" to capture as many celtralist Republicans and independents as he can. He is one cynical politician who will say or do anything.

Reis Kash, Springfield, Oregon, USA

Put Obama's oratory skills and deep pockets aside, and it would be no competition; because then, people would have to actually look at what they accomplished. Woops. Obama is all talk, no substance. McCain is clearly the better qualified choice.

randy, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, U.S.

It is probably a better idea to look at his past actions, rather than his current statements. Like so many politicians he is trying to be all things to all people but having one of the most left wing voting records in congress suggest where his true loyalties lie.

David Lea-Smith, Edinburgh, U.K.

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    Andrew Sullivan

    Andrew Sullivan is an author, academic and journalist. He holds a PhD from Harvard in political science, and is a former editor of The New Republic. His 1995 book, Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality, became one of the best-selling books on gay rights. He has been a regular columnist for The Sunday Times since the 1990s, and also writes for Time and other publications.

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