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Dominic Lawson: Meet the new Obama, master of the U-turn"I find comfort in the fact that the longer I'm in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience."Thus spake Barack Obama. These words appear at the conclusion of the chapter entitled "Politics" in Obama's 2006 book The Audacity of Hope. They also sum up much of what we now know about Obama: a man of stunning articulacy, but also stunning self-regard.Both characteristics have been indispensable in powering the first-term Illinois senator to the very brink of the presidency. Now, however, some of those who were most captivated by Obama's perorations about his unflinching conscience are feeling distinctly queasy: in the brief weeks since forcing Hillary Clinton to concede, he has made them wonder what, actually, distinguishes his politics from those of the Clintons at their most ruthlessly pragmatic.Within days of the end of the primary campaign, Obama pledged to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that he would ensure that Jerusalem would remain "the undivided capital of Israel". Even George Bush had never made such a commitment, so Obama's remarks were criticised not just by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but by the State Department itself, as prejudging complex negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Obama, however, had achieved his domestic objective – he could no longer be labelled by the Republicans as "anti-Israel".Then, on 19 June, Obama declared that he would opt out of the regulated public campaign financing system, becoming the first presidential candidate since Richard Nixon to choose to raise unlimited private funds, instead. The reason is obvious: he is now raising vastly more than the Republican John McCain, who is committed to taking public funds. The trouble is that Obama had pledged, in writing, that he would remain within the public system, if his opponent did so.
This is going to be a long thread. I intend on adding to it. He doesn't flip flop, he zig zags.