This past week, the Obama who supported gay marriage when running for Illinois legislature, then flipped against it as candidate for president, flopped once more to serve his re-election. The president's reversal did not just evolve. Its politics became transparent.
Recently, in perhaps the most damning YouTube moment yet in a presidential race, Barack Obama was captured putting domestic politics ahead of foreign policy. He was caught on an open microphone, telling outgoing Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that he would be more amenable to Russian interests on the issue of missile defense if he survived the November elections. "This is my last election," Obama said. "After my election, I have more flexibility."
The president's mask slipped. The politician beneath was revealed. Voters, including the president's core female supporters, got to see what they had only suspected: Obama's priorities aren't necessarily theirs.
Republicans have never been able to paint Obama as a flip-flopper, despite a litany of evidence.
Candidate Obama supported "pay as you go budgeting," but the economic meltdown excused him from his commitment, allowing him to propose a decade of trillion-dollar deficits. He spent a trillion dollars on health care, but explained it was a practical strategy to save money. In the same moment, he has urged both expensive stimulus and deficit reduction. Still he has been excused, as a practical man, with long and short-range fiscal tools on his workbench.
There is a good chance the Obama campaign is about to disintegrate, if only briefly. Obama is about to walk through "the valley of death," where candidates lose their way and are tested on an arid march. In this familiar story, the campaign that could do no wrong can do no right. Pundits who predicted an Obama victory have reversed course and insist Romney is a sure bet.
