THE FIRST POST: Hope and change? The Illinois senator is offering nothing new, argues CHARLES LAURENCE
So, Barack Obama looks more and more like a Hillary Clinton-beater after a national Zogby poll published yesterday puts him within a tantalising point of the former First Lady. And his prospects seem all the better because he is taking votes from Hillary's core support of women and blacks, while appealing to a new generation of young voters.
Obama has hijacked Bill Clinton's pitch of 'Hope and Change', and it is working on Americans who take their politics from bumper stickers and paid TV spots. But do they know really who they are voting for?
The 46-year-old Senator from Illinois says he is the Washington outsider. Really? He may have only a couple of years' Senate experience, but his greatest asset is a well-calculated role in the Democratic Machine. From Illinois to Iowa, he has always kept ahead by staying in line with the power brokers and casting the right vote, or none at all.
He claims to be committed to change. But he flip-flopped on President Bush's 'war on terror' Patriot Act, which curbs civil liberties, targets immigrants and has unleashing domestic spying. At first - in 2003 - he joined the chorus condemning it as a step towards the prediction that "when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross." By 2006 he was voting for its re-authorisation.
At least he voted: he has abstained on an astonishing 166 issues to avoid leaving a trial which might impede his presidential ambitions.
He once told the National Organisation of Women that he did "not support" the repeal of the Defence of Marriage Act. But with gay and new-generation votes at stake, he now believes "in the need to fully repeal the Defence of Marriage Act". In Chicago, he wanted to ban handguns. Now he supports gun 'freedom'. Once he opposed capital punishment. Now, inevitably, he wants more care taken with the lethal injections.
This is not change; this is business as usual, the careerist maneuvering of an oily old-style politician, albeit dressed in a fresh coat of paint. Obama is just another machine politician >>> By Charles Laurence
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
