What does Barack Obama truly believe? Does it depend on the day of the week?
True, candidates typically tack to the center after contentious primaries. But the "candidate of change" is taking that process to Twilight Zone levels.
* Last fall, a spokesman said of a controversial element in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorization bill, "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."
This week, Obama declared his support for a FISA bill that included just such immunity.
* Last week, Obama switched his position on public financing of presidential campaigns.
* He's managed to switch his position on NAFTA twice: He supported it before the primary; said he wanted to renegotiate it while campaigning in Ohio - and now has told a magazine interviewer that his language during the primaries may have been "overheated."
* On foreign policy, his longstanding assertion that he would meet with the leaders of regimes hostile to the United States "without preconditions" has gone by the boards.
* His declaration before AIPAC that he believed in a "united Jerusalem" didn't even last a news cycle - a spokesman produced a "clarification" within hours after Obama's speech.
Again, adjustments of message are normal as a campaign proceeds. And changing circumstances can result in changing positions - such as John McCain's acknowledgement that the energy crisis now warrants more domestic oil drilling.
But Barack Obama's twists and turns reveal a lack of fundamental bearings.
Does he stand for anything?
http://www.nypost.com/seven/06282008/postopinion/editorials/obama__adrift_117603.htm
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