FRANK JAMES, CHICAGO TRIBUNE – There’s the new Harper’s magazine cover story [By Ken Silverstein] whose essential point appears to be that the junior senator from Illinois is really shaping up to be a tool of the monied interest. . . Here’s a taste of the article which is captured in its last couple of sentences. “On condition of anonymity, one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn’t see him as a ‘player.’ The lobbyist added: ‘What’s the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?’ “

Very little, is the answer both the lobbyist and Silverstein imply. Obama has raised a lot of money from such lobbyists so draw your own conclusions, the article seems to say.

A lot of lobbyists have contributed to Obama’s campaign and political action committee for the same reason a lot of non-lobbyists are energized by him–he’s smart and charismatic, Silverstein suggests. . .

Obama voted against the overall bill which was supported by the financial-services industry. But he sided with the industry on certain proposals. For instance, he opposed a proposal that would have capped credit-card interest rates at 30 percent, a limit that was sought by consumer groups. . .

Silverstein also noted the senator’s push for the increased use of alternative fuels like ethanol to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and help reduce carbon emissions. That seems a mighty environmentally friendly and national-security conscious position to take. But remember that Illinois is a big producer of corn, from which ethanol is made, and is home to agribusiness giants Archer Daniels Midland and Aventine Renewable Energy, Silverstein says, the implication being that Obama is doing agribusiness’s bidding in order to keep raising big money. He has raised more than $21 million since he announced his run for the U.S. Senate, Silverstein tells us. . .

KEN SILVERSTEIN, HARPER’S – Since announcing his candidacy for the Illinois Senate seat, Obama has raised the astonishing sum of nearly $21 million and has built close relationships with a number of traditional fat-cat donors. For example, one of Obama’s leading career patrons is Skadden, Arps ($53,271, according to the most recent disclosure filings), a leading corporate law firm and one of the biggest donors to the Democratic Party.

Several of the firm’s lawyers donated money to Obama and also helped raise money for him as well. That includes Christina Tchen, a corporate litigator at Skadden who has represented major financial firms in consumer class-action suits. . .

In November of last year, three other Skadden attorneys helped organize a fundraiser for Obama’s Leadership PAC, the vehicle he uses to support other Democratic candidates, and to boost his own political profile and gain support within the party. . . Others who have helped raise funds for Obama’s Leadership PAC include John Gorman of Texas-based Tejas Securities, a major funder of Senate Democrats (and of the Bush presidential campaigns) and Winston & Strawn, the Chicago-based law and lobbying firm. Individual contributors to Obama include some of the best-connected lobbyists in town, including Jeffrey Peck (whose clients include MasterCard, the Business Roundtable, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) and Rich Tarplin (Chevron, the American Petroleum Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers).

In the magazine article, I asserted that Obama is not a mouthpiece for his donors; neither does his voting record mirrors the wishes of his contributor list. But, as I suggested, it’s naive to think that he’s completely unaware of who’s footing the bills. Exelon, a leading nuclear-plant operator based in Illinois, is a big donor to Obama, and its executive and employees have given him more than $70,000 since 2004. The Obama staffer pointed out that the senator pushed for legislation that would require nuclear companies to “inform state and local officials if there is an accidental or unintentional leak of a radioactive substance,” according to an office press release. Obama took a stand on that issue following reports that a plant operated by Exelon had leaked tritium several times over the past decade.

But Exelon is probably not entirely unhappy with Obama. At a 2005 hearing at the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, of which Obama is a member, the senator-echoing the nuclear industry’s current campaign to promotes nuclear energy as “green” – said that since Congress was debating “policies to address air quality and the deleterious effects of carbon emissions on the global ecosystem, it is reasonable – and realistic – for nuclear power to remain on the table for consideration.” He was immediately lauded by the industry publication Nuclear Notes, which said, “Back during his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, [Obama] said that he rejected both liberal and conservative labels in favor of ‘common sense solutions.’ And when it comes to nuclear energy, it seems like the Senator is keeping an open mind.”

To anyone who thinks Obama is blissfully oblivious to the fundraising imperative, consider the following: in one of his earliest votes as a senator, Obama helped pass a class-action “reform” bill that was a long-standing and cherished goal of business groups. (The bill was the focus of a significant lobbying effort by financial firms, who constitute Obama’s second-biggest single bloc of donors.). . .

DERRICK Z. JACKSON, BOSTON GLOBE, AUG 2007 – It is unclear if Barack Obama’s caution precedes consensus or cave-in. Asked if he would eliminate discriminatory laws that punish crack cocaine possession so heavily that it would take 100 times more in powder cocaine for the same sentence, Obama started off by saying the law was a mistake. He talked about his record in the Illinois Senate.

“I want to point out that I fought provisions like this and in many cases voted against provisions like this, knowing the way they could be exploited politically,” Obama told the Trotter Group of African-American newspaper columnists last week after addressing the National Association of Black Journalists. “I thought it was the right thing to do. Even though the politics of it was tough back in the ’90s, as a state legislator I took some tough votes to make sure we didn’t see the perpetration of these kinds of unjust laws.”. . .

Vacillation became evident as he kept talking about crack-vs.-powder sentencing, which has come to symbolize racial injustice in criminal justice. He said that if he were to become president, he would support a commission to issue a report “that allows me to say that based on the expert evidence, this is not working and it’s unfair and unjust. Then I would move legislation forward.”

That was a puzzling statement because the US Sentencing Commission, created by Congress in 1984, has long said the system is not working and reaffirmed in April that the 100-to-1 ratio “significantly undermines” sentencing reform.

[Just four months later, the extremely conservative Supreme Court moved where Obama waffled, as reported by Reuters]

REUTERS – U.S. judges can impose lighter prison sentences than federal guidelines specify, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in cases involving crack cocaine and ecstacy that could add pressure to overhaul sentencing practices. In a racially sensitive issue, the justices overturned a U.S. appeals court ruling that judges cannot hand down a lighter punishment simply because they disagree with wide disparities for crack and powder cocaine sentences. Blacks account for about 80 percent of the federal crack cocaine convictions. The guidelines call for lighter prison terms for the sale of powder cocaine, a drug more popular with whites and Hispanics.

NEDRA PICKLER, ASSOCIATED PRESS – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive. The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

“Let me make this clear,” Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

[Apparently Obama doesn’t think George Bush’s illegalities are all that bad]

AP JUNE 2007 – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama laid out list of political shortcomings he sees in the Bush administration but said he opposes impeachment for either President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. . . “I think you reserve impeachment for grave, grave breeches, and intentional breeches of the president’s authority,” he said.

[We have suggested that Obama’s foreign policy was nowhere near as liberal as many liberals believed. This view was confirmed by the Washington Post’s conservative editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt]

FRED HIATT, WASHINGTON POST – [Barack Obama and Mitt Romney] have laid out their foreign policy visions in parallel articles, released prior to publication in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs. And after you cut through some of their campaign rhetoric, here’s what you find:

(1) The two candidates’ programs are strikingly similar to each other.

(2) Both are strikingly similar to Bush administration policy.

(3) And both, far from retreating to isolationism in the face of Iraq and other challenges, set forth their own wildly ambitious calls for American leadership and the promotion of American values. “Boldness” is an operative word for both of them.

Obama begins: “After Iraq, we may be tempted to turn inward. That would be a mistake. The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew.”

Romney writes: “In the aftermath of World War II and with the coming of the Cold War, members of the ‘greatest generation’ united America and the free world around shared values and actions that changed history. . . . Our times call for equally bold leadership.”

The two differ in some respects, of course. Romney puts more emphasis on combating radical Islam and less on promoting freedom. Obama dwells more on Bush’s failures and the value of diplomacy and endorses a “phased withdrawal” of U.S. troops from Iraq. But even there, the differences are not as stark as the candidates would like them to appear. Obama would maintain in Iraq enough troops “to protect American personnel and facilities, continue training Iraqi security forces, and root out al Qaeda.”

And the similarities dwarf the differences. Both want bigger, not smaller, armed forces: Obama calls for an additional 92,000 ground troops, Romney for 100,000.

Obama calls for a doubling of foreign aid; Romney wants a Marshall Plan-like “Partnership for Prosperity and Progress” that would support schools, microcredit, the rule of law, human rights, health care and the free market in Islamic states.

Romney says that “the jihadist threat is the defining challenge of our generation,” as real as the threat that was posed by Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, and he promises an appropriately sized response. Obama, albeit using slightly different terms, agrees: “To defeat al Qaeda, I will build a twenty-first-century military and twenty-first-century partnerships as strong as the anticommunist alliance that won the Cold War to stay on the offense everywhere from Djibouti to Kandahar.”. . .

In both cases, the criticism is not that Bush took on too much but that he accomplished too little. “We are a unique nation, and there is no substitute for our leadership,” says Romney. Agrees Obama: “We can be this America again. . . . [A]n America that battles immediate evils, promotes an ultimate good, and leads the world once more.”

If Iraq-weary voters are looking for someone who will call on America to “come home,” they won’t find that candidate here.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE – One evening in February 2005, in a four-hour meeting stoked by pepperoni pizza and grand ambition, Sen. Barack Obama and his senior advisers crafted a strategy to fit the Obama “brand.”. . . Some called it the “2010-2012-2016” plan: a potential bid for governor or re-election to the Senate in 2010, followed by a bid for the White House as soon as 2012 or, if not, 2016. The way to get there, they decided, was by carefully building a record that matched the brand identity: Obama as unifier and consensus-builder, an almost post-political leader.

The staffers in that after-hours session, convened by Obama’s Senate staff and including Chicago political adviser David Axelrod, planned a low-profile strategy that would emphasize workhorse results over headlines. Obama would invest in his long-term profile by not seeming too eager for the bright lights. . .

Throughout his time in the Senate, Obama has followed a cautious path, avoiding any severe political bruises. Even before the national mood was turning on Iraq, Obama was a critic of the war, but for most of his time in the Senate he was not a strong voice in opposition. Similarly, the former civil rights attorney and University of Chicago law lecturer did not take to the bully pulpit to speak out publicly on judicial appointments. His strategy called for him to turn away from the cameras when he might otherwise have been a resonant voice. . .

The plan they hatched focused on concrete, achievable goals that included delivering for Illinois, fitting in at the Senate and developing cross-party alliances while avoiding the limelight. . .

To some liberals, [one] proposal was a no-brainer: a ceiling of 30 percent on interest rates for credit cards and other consumer debt. And as he left his office to vote on it, Obama planned to support the measure, which was being considered as an amendment to a major overhaul of the nation’s bankruptcy laws.

But when the amendment came up for a vote, Obama was standing next to Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.), the senior Democrat on the banking committee and the leader of those opposing the landmark bill, which would make it harder for Americans to get rid of debt. “You know, this is probably not a smart amendment for us to vote for,” Obama recalled Sarbanes telling him. “Thirty percent is sort of a random number.”

Obama joined Sarbanes in voting against the amendment, but they lost the larger battle when the new bankruptcy law passed by a lopsided 74-25. There remains no federal ceiling on credit card interest rates.

Obama’s deferral to Sarbanes was just one example of the freshman senator learning to navigate a chamber famous for its egos. . .

Obama the candidate for U.S. Senate spoke out forcefully against the Iraq war. For most of his tenure in Washington, though, Obama the U.S. senator has not been a moving force on Iraq.

He left it to others to lead public opinion. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) emerged as the strongest voices against the war. Those critics all spoke out before Obama gave his first major policy speech on the war — 11 months after he took office.

Several advisers said that during that time Obama wrestled with how to proceed, concerned about the worsening news from Iraq and convinced the public’s mood was turning against the war more rapidly than most members of Congress appreciated. . .

Ultimately Obama delivered a more modest speech in November 2005, five days after Murtha’s call for a troop withdrawal. In that address, he called for reductions in U.S. troop strength but not a timetable for withdrawal.

In a Senate debate the following June, Obama voted against an amendment proposed by Feingold and former presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to set such a timetable.

Only after Obama announced his presidential exploratory committee did he introduce legislation this January that sets a date for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. By then the high-profile, bipartisan Iraq Study Group also had endorsed a deadline for troops to leave.

In May he voted against continued funding of the war, after Bush vetoed a funding package that included a timetable for withdrawal by March 31, 2008. . .

BILL FLETCHER, BLACK COMMENTATOR MAY 2007 – Senator Barack Obama has become a major celebrity, a truth that is now almost a cliche. . . Yet before I jump into his campaign, I have a few questions that I first want to share with you and which I hope he will address in the not-too-distant future.

There is a way in which I cannot tell who is the real Senator Obama. For one, he has not carved out – at least as of this writing – any cutting edge issues where he is taking the lead and defining the terrain. Second, and to some extent more troubling, he permits people to see and assume in him what they want to see and assume. I have said to many of my friends that this situation reminds me of an episode from the original Star Trek series where there was a creature that appears to the viewer the way the viewer would like to see it.

I am, to add to this, very uneasy about some of the Senator’s foreign policy pronouncements, particularly with regard to the Middle East. To his credit, he opposed the Iraq invasion and had the courage to say so. Yet over the last year, he has displayed a peculiarly uncritical stance when it comes to Israel and has all-but-ignored the plight of the Palestinians. This past summer, when Israel launched its massive and deadly assault on Lebanon, the Senator was quite vocal in his support. He seemed to miss the Israeli use of illegal cluster bombs and the lies the Israelis offered for their unapologetic destruction of entire Lebanese civilian communities.

Further, the Senator seems to ignore the atrocious conditions being faced by the Palestinians who, after all, are occupied by the Israelis in violation of United Nations’ resolutions. . . Compounding this odd situation, the Senator seems to want to be a “hawk” when it comes to Iran, describing that country as a threat to Israel and the USA. . .

I am not ready to write off the inspiring Senator from the great State of Illinois, but no matter how hard I try, I keep thinking about that creature from Star Trek.

THE HILL, APRIL 2007 – Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has pledged to create a new brand of politics in the Democratic presidential primary by rejecting contributions from lobbyists and political action committees (PAC), but his fundraising records show that he relies on donors with special interests.

Three of Obama’s top fundraisers, who each have raised more than $50,000 for his campaign since January, were registered as lobbyists last year, according to reports filed with the Senate Office of Public Records. In 2006, Alan Solomont of Solomont Bailis Ventures earned $90,000 in lobbying income; Tom Reed, of Kirkland & Ellis, lobbied for the Seismological Society of America, the Nanobusiness Alliance, and the Airport Minority Advisory Council; and Scott Harris, of Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis, represented Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Dell and Sprint-Nextel.

All three Obama fundraisers have said they are no longer lobbyists, although the public records office has not posted contract termination reports for any of them.

Several other major Obama fundraisers also have histories of lobbying government officials for a living. Thomas Perrelli was a lobbyist for Jenner & Block as recently as 2005. Until 2003, when Obama was a member of the Illinois Senate, Peter Bynoe was a registered state lobbyist representing Boeing and other corporate interests, according to the Illinois secretary of state. They have both raised at least $50,000 for Obama’s presidential bid, according to his campaign. Frank Clark, chairman of Commonwealth Edison, helped lead a $2.2 million congressional lobbying effort on nuclear research and waste disposal in 2000, according to a report under his name filed with the Senate. He also raised more than $50,000 for Obama this year. He played an important part trying to persuade state lawmakers to deregulate the energy industry in Illinois.

All this may surprise Obama’s supporters. In a fundraising e-mail sent to supporters at the beginning of March, the candidate wrote that Washington’s special-interest industry is trying *œto own our political process and dictate our policies in Washington. We’re not going to play that game. We’re not taking any contributions from Washington lobbyists or political action committees. We’re going to transform the political process by bringing together hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans to build a campaign.*�

ABC – Barack Obama has often said he’d consider putting Republicans in his cabinet and even bandied about names like Sens. Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel. He’s a added a new name to the list of possible Republicans cabinet members – Arnold Schwarzenegger. Obama regularly says he would look to Republicans to fill out his cabinet if he was elected, but at a town hall event in Manchester, N.H., he was pushed to name names. . .

Sen. Dick Lugar: ‘He’s a Republicans who I worked with on issues of arms control, wonderful guy. He is somebody I think embodies the tradition of a bipartisan foreign policy that is sensible, that is not ideological, that is based on the idea that we have to have some humility and restraint in terms of our ability to project power around the world,’� Obama said about his Senate colleague.

Sen. Chuck Hagel: ‘Vietnam vet, similar approach and somebody I respect in a similar fashion,’ Obama added.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: “What (he’s) doing on climate change in California is very important and significant. There are things I don’t agree with him on, but he’s taken leadership on a very difficult issue and we haven’t seen that kind of leadership in Washington,” Obama said of the California governor.

JOHN MCCORMICK, CHICAGO TRIBUNE – A soon-to-be-released biography about Sen. Barack Obama portrays the Democratic presidential candidate as a far more calculating politician than his most ardent supporters might imagine. One such calculation was his much-heralded 2002 speech in Chicago about the impending Iraq war, according to “Obama: From Promise to Power,” a nearly 400-page book by Tribune reporter David Mendell to be released in August.

Obama gave the speech not just because of a desire to speak out about the impending invasion, Mendell asserts, but also to curry favor with a potential political patron, Bettylu Saltzman, a stalwart among Chicago’s liberal elite, and to also try to win over his future top political adviser, David Axelrod, who was close to Saltzman.

“Obama, still an unannounced candidate for the U.S. Senate, did not immediately agree [to speak at the rally],”according to an advance copy obtained by the Tribune. “But he told Saltzman that he would think it over.”

After consulting with a political aide, the future candidate, who was indeed personally opposed to the invasion, agreed to make the speech.

“Obama was trying to draw Axelrod onto his Senate campaign team,” the book says. “It would not be wise to disappoint Saltzman if he wanted her to continue lobbying Axelrod on his behalf. So Obama agreed to speak.”

Axelrod, now Obama’s top adviser, denied that the Illinois Democrat made the speech to win over political friends and mentors. “That’s not true,” said Axelrod, who added that he was advising Obama “in an informal way” at the time. . . .

The book also suggests Obama and his advisers initially were incensed that top Democrats had relegated him to a speaking slot at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston that was not carried live over the three major TV networks. The keynote address ultimately was what helped propel him to the national stage.

“As it has all turned out, we all look like geniuses,” Obama’s senate campaign manager Jim Cauley says in the book. “But back then, we were totally pissed.”

The book opens with a scene from Boston on the afternoon before Obama’s big speech. “The swagger in his step appeared even cockier than usual on the afternoon of July 27, 2004,” the book says. Once past a security checkpoint, Obama told Mendell that he felt like LeBron James, the National Basketball Association star. “I’m LeBron, baby,” Obama is quoted as saying. “I can play on this level. I got some game.”

JOHN KASS, CHICAGO TRIBUNE – Often missing from the Obama puffery is any acknowledgment that despite the rhetoric, Obama is all but a front man for Mayor Richard Daley’s Chicago Democratic political machine. He has backed Daley for re-election, with City Hall awash in federal investigations, and he’s got the mayor’s media strategist David Axelrod massaging his message. Obama has supported other machine creatures. . . I don’t know what Washington political writers call it. But back home, this is what we call transcending politics the Chicago Way.

WHY OBAMA ATTRACTS THE RIGHT

SAM SMITH – Harry Truman remarked that whenever anyone said they were bipartisan he knew they were going to vote against him. Barrack Obama is the latest major politician to use this ploy, promising mushy abstractions instead of actual policies, making nice to everyone in the room while ducking the issues they raise and, in a time of historic confrontation over whether America can recover its constitutional democracy, pretending that the answer is somewhere in the middle.

But what is the middle ground between democracy and fascism? Between having a job or a house or being unemployed or homeless? Between having health care or dying?

As William Lloyd Garrison put it, “Tell a man whose house is on fire to give moderate alarm; tel1 him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen.”

The myth of the happy center is a major illusion dominating public life in Washington. . . Even the KKK, so often cited as an example of the sort of threat the non-center poses, was powerful primarily because it was at the center, holding political and judicial and law enforcement office as well as hiding beneath its robes. In some towns, lynching parties were even announced in the local paper. And in the 1920s, both the Colorado governor and mayor of Denver were members of the Klan, the latter well enough regarded to have had Stapleton airport named after him.

The centrist myth most dramatically fails when those acting upon it dramatically fail. What is the center on Iraq? On climate change? On the creeping coup taking over America? On the monopolization of the marketplace?

A 10,000 word piece in the New Yorker – purveyor of the appropriate to the liberal elite – features Obama as the “conciliator” with hardly a solid program or policy mentioned. The message of the article – like Obama’s – is that we don’t need a president, just a therapist.

Take healthcare for example:

“‘We’ve got to put more money in prevention,’ he said. ‘It makes no sense for children to be going to the emergency room for treatable ailments like asthma. Twenty per cent of our patients who have chronic illnesses account for eighty per cent of the costs, so it’s absolutely critical that we invest in managing those with chronic illnesses like diabetes. If we hire a case manager to work with them to insure that they’re taking the proper treatments, then potentially we’re not going to have to spend thirty thousand dollars on a leg amputation.’ A young man asked about health care for minorities. ‘Obesity and diabetes in minority communities are more severe,’ Obama said, “so I think we need targeted programs, particularly to children in those communities, to make sure that they’ve got sound nutrition, that they have access to fruits and vegetables and not just Popeyes, and that they have decent spaces to play in instead of being cooped up in the house all day.'”

So just eat your vegetables and stay away from Popeyes and all will be fine.

Pressed on the matter, Obama does go a little deeper:

“‘If you’re starting from scratch,” he says, ‘then a single-payer system’ -a government-managed system like Canada’s, which disconnects health insurance from employment- ‘would probably make sense. But we’ve got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that’s not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they’ve known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.'”

Since ordinary people could adapt to the expansion of the Medicare system in a matter of days, who are these people of whom Obama speaks who might “feel like suddenly what they’ve known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside?” Well, the insurance companies would be the ones most affected, and Obama has just sent a clear if covert signal that he won’t be messing with them.

The right understands the centrist myth far better than liberals. They know that the center is homeland security for inaction in public, lots of action behind the scenes, and power staying where it should: with the powerful. It’s not surprising that some of them see Obama as their man, the “black Reagan” as he has been called.

Yet he is also the liberals’ Pat Robertson, and while the right can see where they can cut deals with him, the liberal evangelicals are all misty eyed by his talk of hope and faith. But Harry Truman was right: that guy serving you the happy meals of centrism in the campaign is likely going to be on the other side after election day.

A FEW THINGS TO FORGET ABOUT WHEN SUPPORTING OBAMA

PAUL STREET, Z MAG – So what sorts of policies and values could one expect from an imagined Obama presidency? There is quite a bit already in Obama’s short national career that has to be placed in the “never mind” category if one is to seriously to believe his claim (cautiously advanced in The Audacity of Hope) to be a “progressive” concerned with “social and economic justice” and global peace.

Never mind, for example, that Obama was recently hailed as a “Hamiltonian” believer in “limited government” and “free trade” by Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks, who praises Obama for having “a mentality formed by globalization, not the SDS.” Or that he had to be shamed off the “New Democrat Directory” of the corporate-right Democratic Leadership Council by the popular left black Internet magazine Black Commentator . . .

Never mind that Obama has lent his support to the aptly named Hamilton Project, formed by corporate-neo-liberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and “other Wall Street Democrats” to counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party. . . Or that he lent his politically influential and financially rewarding assistance to neoconservative pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman’s (“D”-CT) struggle against the Democratic antiwar insurgent Ned Lamont. Or that Obama has supported other “mainstream Democrats” fighting antiwar progressives in primary races . . . Or that he criticized efforts to enact filibuster proceedings against reactionary Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

Never mind that Obama “dismissively” referred – in a “tone laced with contempt” – to the late progressive and populist U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone as “something of a gadfly.” . . . Or that “he posted a long article on the liberal blog Daily Kos criticizing attacks against lawmakers who voted for right-wing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.” Or that he opposed an amendment to the Bankruptcy Act that would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Or that he told Time magazine’s Joe Klein last year that he’d never given any thought to Al Gore’s widely discussed proposal to link a “carbon tax” on fossil fuels to targeted tax relief for the nation’s millions of working poor . . .

Never mind that Obama voted for a business-friendly “tort reform” bill that rolls back working peoples’ ability to obtain reasonable redress and compensation from misbehaving corporations. . .

Or that Obama claims to oppose the introduction of single-payer national health insurance on the grounds that such a widely supported social-democratic change would lead to employment difficulties for workers in the private insurance . . .

Never mind that Obama voted to re-authorize the repressive PATRIOT Act. Or that he voted for the appointment of the war criminal Condaleeza Rice to (of all things) Secretary of State. Or that he opposed Senator Russ Feingold’s (D-WI) move to censure the Bush administration after the president was found to have illegally wiretapped U.S. citizens. Or that he shamefully distanced himself from fellow Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin’s forthright criticism of U.S. torture practices at Guantanamo. Or that he refuses to foreswear the use of first-strike nuclear weapons against Iran. . .

Never mind that Obama’s famous 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address – widely credited for catapulting him to national prominence – expressed numerous reactionary and incorrect notions that make the praise it received from the far right National Review (who called Obama’s oration “simple and powerful”) less than mysterious on close examination. . .

OBAMA: IMPERIALIST IN DOVE’S CLOTHING

ROBERT KAGAN, WASHINGTON POST – Obama’s speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week was pure John Kennedy, without a trace of John Mearsheimer. . . No one speaks of the “free world” these days, and Obama’s insistence that we not “cede our claim of leadership in world affairs” will sound like an anachronistic conceit to many Europeans, who even in the 1990s complained about the bullying “hyperpower.” In Moscow and Beijing it will confirm suspicions about America’s inherent hegemonism. But Obama believes the world yearns to follow us, if only we restore our worthiness to lead. . .

His critique is not that we’ve meddled too much but that we haven’t meddled enough. There is more to building democracy than “deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot box.” We must build societies with “a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force.” We must build up “the capacity of the world’s weakest states” and provide them “what they need to reduce poverty, build healthy and educated communities, develop markets, . . . generate wealth . . . fight terrorism . . . halt the proliferation of deadly weapons” and fight disease. Obama proposes to double annual expenditures on these efforts, to $50 billion, by 2012. . .

“We cannot hope to shape a world where opportunity outweighs danger unless we ensure that every child, everywhere, is taught to build and not to destroy. . .

Okay, you say, but at least Obama is proposing all this Peace Corps-like activity as a substitute for military power. Surely he intends to cut or at least cap a defense budget soaring over $500 billion a year. Surely he understands there is no military answer to terrorism. Actually, Obama wants to increase defense spending. He wants to add 65,000 troops to the Army and recruit 27,000 more Marines. Why? To fight terrorism.

He wants the American military to “stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar,” and he believes that “the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face.” He wants to ensure that we continue to have “the strongest, best-equipped military in the world.”

Obama never once says that military force should be used only as a last resort. Rather, he insists that “no president should ever hesitate to use force — unilaterally if necessary,” not only “to protect ourselves . . . when we are attacked,” but also to protect “our vital interests” when they are “imminently threatened.” That’s known as preemptive military action. It won’t reassure those around the world who worry about letting an American president decide what a “vital interest” is and when it is “imminently threatened.”

Nor will they be comforted to hear that “when we use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others.” Make every effort?

Conspicuously absent from Obama’s discussion of the use of force are four words: United Nations Security Council.

Obama talks about “rogue nations,” “hostile dictators,” “muscular alliances” and maintaining “a strong nuclear deterrent.” He talks about how we need to “seize” the “American moment.” We must “begin the world anew.” . . .

THE TIMIDITY OF HOPE

SAM SMITH – Here’s one reason Barack Obama talks so much about the audacity of hope: his policies are so meek.

For example, he is clearly afraid to get anywhere near single payer healthcare so he comes up with a plan where the federal government would subsidize the auto companies’ healthcare in return for more fuel efficient cars.

Aside from the fact that this is in opposition to far wiser efforts to disassociate healthcare from the work place, aside from the fact it is a corporatist policy that makes government even more a hostage of industry, aside from the subsidy to General Motors and its ilk, Obama not only is afraid of challenging the health insurance industry, he wants government to help further fill its trough. Although less bizarre than Hillary Clinton’s 1990s health plan, there is no justification for it other than pure political convenience.

If this is the best he can come up with, there’s good reason he’s taken the easy way out and applied the marketing principles of Tony Robbins and Marianne Williamson to a political campaign. Having gone through eight years of EST with Bill Clinton and almost that much of AA with George Bush, we should be burned out on psycho-therapeutics as opposed to physical reality but sadly many are taken in by Obama’s covert message that if you trust in hope you don’t have to worry about the details like pensions and healthcare.

There are several problems with this.

One is that no one has presented the slightest evidence of why Obama’s hope and faith is better than that of any of the other candidates.

The second problem is that hope is not audacious at all. Audacious would be doing something now, audacious would be taking a personal political risk because the country needs it, audacious would be saying something unconventional because the conventional is killing us. Audacity is not turning one’s back on present needs and praying that the future will straighten it all out.

One of the best kept secrets in America today is the extent to which hope and faith are being used as seedy substitutes for action and reason. Too often, hope is a form of postponement and faith a substitute for action or facing the truth.

As they say in the ‘hood, hope don’t pay the cable.

And as Tijn Touber has noted, “If you hang on to hope, you’ll always have to wait” and “waiting makes you passive.”

Thus, someone like Obama functions as a political sedative. His message is that we don’t have to worry so much about what’s happening because we can let the future handle it.

This is not audacious; it’s either a con or cowardice.