I wasn't expecting perfection from Barack Obama. As a matter of fact, the one fear that I had about his run for the presidency was that he might find it expedient to behave like the same old politicians we've become accustomed to. And it's happened already.
I don't mind that he decided not to accept public financing for his campaign after pledging to do so. Changing your mind when you have more information happens to us all, even seekers of political office. What bothers me is that rather than saying, "I made a mistake when I made that pledge. I had no idea then that I would be able to raise so much money from such a broad base of the electorate. Now that I see that possibility, I am no longer interested in public financing."
Instead, Barack decided to "spin" his decision. That was such a typical run-of-the-mill political response. And I'm disappointed. I expected honesty and candor from him. Is that setting my sights too high?
1 comment:
My guess is that you've always known he was just a typical politician, but like many people you've been caught up in the hype. Now that we've moved into general election mode it gets harder and harder to stomach his right wing positions on so many issues. In general election time it's all about abortion, god, guns and gays. On abortion, Hillary was always right. He's pro-choice, but with a ton of qualifiers. On god, it's no surprise that his first general election campaign ad is about the traditional family values he learned growing up in Kansas. On guns, he didn't even have the balls to speak out against today's insane Supreme Court decision on D.C.'s handgun ban. On gays, he's always been opposed to gay marriage.
Basically, it's the usual choice of every four years of deciding if you want to vote for the lesser of two evils or if you want to "waste" your vote on a third-party candidate that has principles. Obama is slightly to the left of Gore, slightly to the right of Kerry, far to the right of Dukakis which puts him about even with Bill Clinton. Remember Obama was a member of the DLC until the Congressional Black Caucus shamed him into leaving.
But........in the immortal words of W. Kamau Bell, "yeah, but he's Black." And that may be important enough to ignore that he's pro-death penalty and wants to increase the military budget and is coming out as more pro-Israel than even George Bush.
[This little ray of sunshine was brought to you courtesy of a guy that maybe hauled a few too many boxes in the hot sun today. I think it's time to go home and pour myself a nice drink.]
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