The title above is relevant to a short and very funny post by Keith Pavlischek at the First Things blog — check it out.

There’s also a link there to the source material in an interview given by Barack Obama to a then-reporter with the Chicago Sun-Times. The interview took place in 2004 — while Obama was running for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, and is on the subject of religious faith. It’s pretty fascinating. Quite unguarded, although not, I think, totally unguarded. But I can’t imagine him giving anything resembling this interview today. Which is a shame, really.

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Richard responds graciously to my post “Where has the old Barack Obama gone?”:

Well, I didn’t support any or the D’s, by name, 6 months ago, but now that we have Obama, I am in his corner. Now what about this flip-flopping? I think the word “significantly,” is the key. O. has not “significantly” changed his mind on Iraq. He’s actually done what McCain challenged him to do, and gone over and talked to the generals. He’s still in favor of ending the war, he’s willing to juggle the timetable. Am I missing something? Off shore drilling - significant? I don’t think so. Willing to compromise - sounds that way to me. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Compromise is the name of the game. Get a decent energy bill, even if you have to go for something you’d rather not.

I’ll give you campaign financing. Tsk, tsk on that one. Gun control and the death penalty pretty much got by me, but as I recall the gun control bit was more nuanced than a “significant” flip flop. Rev Wright - none too soon, and nothing wrong with a politician coming to his senses.

So, I stick with Obama because the other choice is McCain. McCain probably never had a chance with me, but when he embraced GW, even after the GW machine savaged his family, he lost my respect. I could have not voted for McCain and still respected him, so that’s a shame.

But, let’s face it, neither of them is pure, and anyone who thinks either might be just woke up in a cabbage patch.

Well, I’m in total agreement on the last point.

We would have to disagree on other things, including the extent to which Obama has, well, recalibrated his positions on issues. My post was really addressed (rhetorically) not to someone in Richard’s position but to those who’ve fervently followed Obama from the very start — wondering at how they can feel like they are really supporting the same candidate, substantively speaking, now that he’s adjusted, and continues to adjust, for the general election. (And then there’s someone like Joan Baez. Who exactly does she think she’s supporting?)

To take just the Iraq issue: he’s now willing indeed to juggle the timetable and consider conditions on the ground, but it was my impression that many people voted for him in the primaries and caucuses precisely because they thought he was most likely to take the troops out no matter what. It is definitely laudable that he appears willing to make some concessions to reality. Should he become president, that will prove a useful trait.

However, I’m not hitting him with the label of “flip-flopper” as if that’s the deal-breaker. It’s the particular and disingenuous kind of way in which he’s advanced from one position to another that I don’t like. It seems to demonstrate a capacity or a willingness to finesse just about anything.

But the thing that inspired the “Where has the old Barack Obama gone?” post was, more than anything else, Obama’s evolution from someone who promised a new politics and a different kind of campaign to someone who now insists on following the the same old ingrained rigmarole of choreographed conventions, super-slick ad campaigns, and a few carefully planned and rehearsed TV debates in the fall. As someone who was (frankly speaking) never going to support Obama, or any other conceivable Democrat nominee, in the 2008 election, I still harbored some benign feelings towards him because (1) he seemed to be succeeding in ending the stifling reign of the Clintonistas in the Democratic party and (2) he seemed to promise a more civil and candid kind of approach to political debate. I think that Obama’s rejection of McCain’s idea of multiple town hall debates leading up to the conventions (after having indicated as recently as May that he liked the idea) just puts paid to the possibility of having a different kind of campaign in 2008. Obama doesn’t like how the McCain team has mocked him as a celebrity, but he’s quite deliberately passed on his best chance to prove his substance and to truly let America get to know him — as opposed to having a war of images and sound-bites. Which is what we’re going to have.

As for McCain — obviously I’m supporting him, despite reservations which have been brooded over often enough before. Of-course my reservations have nothing to do with his having embraced Dubya, but more to do with times during which he’s opposed him (tax cuts, ANWR, campaign finance “reform”, etc.).

Well, the campaign will continue, and chances are that the republic will survive whatever happens in this election.

There are those on my side of things who think that — with Obama failing to take an expected strong lead at this stage, and with the mocking “celebrity” label appearing to have traction against him — this election is looking almost sewn-up for McCain. I don’t think so. I think it should be clear to the Obama team that they’re not going to win by floating along on “change” and “hope” and whatnot, like they did in the Democrat primaries (those that they won, at least). In fact, some of the very stuff that led to Obama’s success in the past now appears to have deteriorated in the popular perception to the level of laugh-lines. The Obama campaign must realize that McCain is trying to make this a referendum on Obama, and in particular on his lack of experience and substance. Their next move, if they have any political sense, will be to attempt to turn the tables and make it a referendum on McCain, and in particular on his age and temperament. That’s not nice, but I think it’s reality. And I think that there are many out there in the mainstream media who are willing to do some of the work on that score.

So, it’s looking to me like the only way in which this election is going to be different to any others in recent memory is the degree to which it is going to get really, really nasty.

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