Obama Moving to the Center or the Center moving to Obama?

American politics

Occupying the centre

Jun 30th 2008
From The Economist print edition


How Barack Obama is taking to the middle of the road

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THE love-in last week in Unity, New Hampshire, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton stood together, was a marker in Mr Obama’s campaign to be president. Mrs Clinton spoke of standing “shoulder to shoulder” with her Democratic former rival;
he gushed about “how good she is, how tough she is, how passionate she is”.

It was the first time since Mrs Clinton dropped out of the race that the two had appeared together in public. From now on Mr Obama will tap Mrs Clinton’s financial donors, enlist some of her staff and reach out to her supporters.

With the primary season forgotten, Mr Obama is now sauntering towards the centre, ready to spar with John McCain. In the process he may enrage left-wing activists who constitute his base (however Mr McCain faces the same, or even a harder, challenge with his supporters on the right).

Since wrapping up the nomination Mr Obama has taken a number of positions that have caused discomfort to some on the left.

These have included: his solemn undertaking to protect Israel, in a speech to the leading pro-Israeli lobby; the reversal of his promise to accept public-funding limits for the election; and, last week, his waffled reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling on gun rights. Individually, these topics are not of huge electoral importance. But Mr Obama is busy signalling that he belongs in the middle of the road.

More tests await. On Iraq Mr Obama has made an explicit promise to “remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months”.

Naturally a more peaceful Iraq would provide conditions in which a withdrawal is more likely, but as president he would have to weigh the risk that leaving quickly might jeopardise the relative improvement in security in the country.

There have been nods and winks from Obamaite foreign-policy wonks that he would revisit the pledge when president, but Mr McCain will want to focus on the subject before then. The Republican has already chided his rival for not making a trip to Iraq for more than two years. Mr Obama recently said that he will go there soon.

Then there is the looming Senate vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which contains a provision granting telecoms companies immunity from lawsuits for co-operating in a surveillance programme that conducted wiretaps without warrants.

Mr Obama had said he was “proud” to stand with “a grassroot movement of Americans” in opposing the FISA legislation, but he has now watered down his opposition and supports the latest compromise, to the fury of liberal bloggers. MoveOn.org, the left’s noisiest pressure group, is running a campaign to persuade Mr Obama to vote against the bill. Senate leaders are desperately trying to engineer a separate vote on the immunity provision so that the senator from Illinois can register his objection.

Another issue rumbling away is free trade. During the primaries Mr Obama joined Mrs Clinton in turning up the rhetorical heat against NAFTA. Both floated the threat of an “opt out” from the agreement to force renegotiations with Canada and Mexico, which Mr Obama said could be used to gain “leverage” with their trading partners.

This went down well among unions and displaced workers in the rustbelt states, but Mr Obama has since talked about the importance of trade and markets, in an effort to sound a bit more sensible on economic policy.

This last transition is particularly delicate. In a recent interview for Fortune, Mr Obama admitted that “sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified” and that he wanted to open a dialogue.

“Obama goes soft on free trade”, thundered the Nation, a left-leaning magazine, pointing out that Mr Obama’s perceived hostility to free trade is the characteristic most likely to appeal to working-class voters in the mid-west in November’s general election.

He is not helped by a hostile takeover bid for Anheuser-Busch from a Belgian brewer. The maker of Budweiser is based in the swing-state of Missouri, where Democrats are calling opposition to a deal “patriotic”. One consolation is that Mr McCain will also be keen to avoid the subject, as his wife owns at least $1m-worth of Anheuser shares and stands to benefit financially from a deal.