Centerfield

To say that his position statements are largely temporary or misleading is to say that he's a politician. No politician is honest and genuine enough to deserve your faith. The question is whether they deserve your vote. Confusing the two may well be the original sin of democracy.

Consider, as a third possibility, the following:
- his current positions represent the ends that he believes desirable, AND
- he is entirely willing (as he doesn't say during the primary season, but has demonstrated on occasion in the past) to work with people who have other views, to craft a compromise which a broad spectrum of the population can embrace.

But if he goes into office with solid Democratic majorities in both houses, how much need to compromise will he have? As compared to just opening the flood gates to massive spending and social programs?

He talks compromise and unity, but his campaign positions are a long laundry list of very expensive promises. Sure, they all sound like wonderful things, but they also all come with price tags.

TANSTAAFL. Obama knows there's not a chance in hell this country could or would pay for even half his promises. Yet he keeps making them. That doesn't inspire any confidence in me.

Oh, I hear you Tully.

And which of the candidates, among those with more than say 15% of the delegates so far, has NOT been promising far far more than they can ever deliver? Even when, as with Romney in Michigan, they are experienced enough to know first hand that what they are saying is total nonsense.

If you get excited about politicians' promises, you need to to reflect on this fact: there are essentially two kinds of politicians:
- those that promise their constituents everything,
- those who are not elected.
Occasionally, an out-of-the-closet libertarian sneaks in. But it's way to rare to impact the overall picture.

That being the case, the best any of us can do as voters is try for someone who
a) will at least refrain from making the situation worse by setting everybody at each others' throats (e.g. not Clinton)
b) has two brain cells to rub together.
Alas, just finding that is hard enough.

McCain doesn't seem to me to be tossing out bushels of promises.

Comparatively speaking,of course.

Obama's record SO FAR comforts me. SO FAR, his legislative proposals have been practical and helpful.

Of course, it's a different ball of wax being President and having a Presidential-level agenda, working with DC-style ideas about facts and numbers, and trying to get bipartisan support against all DC's partisan pressures.

Still, I suspect his proposals will be much more practical than HillaryCare.

Tully, are you suggesting that there will be a wholesale slaughter of Republican Senators in November, giving the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority?

Why, whatever could cause America to do that?????

As for paying for promises... George Bush's promises have added more than 4 trillion to our national debt with little difference in GDP between his expensive tax cuts and Clinton's tax hikes. I doubt if Obama could ever top that, especially if he's thinking of significantly drawing down the $11 billion/month effort in Iraq.

Tully, are you suggesting that there will be a wholesale slaughter of Republican Senators in November, giving the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority?

Why, Marcus, are you suggesting that ideological purity in the minority is so rigid that no Senator EVER votes against the party line? Heh. Just from knowing that 2/3rds of the contested Senate seats this year are of one party, I can confidently predict that said party will lose three seats without even knowing the current political situation or the specifics of the seats. Thank you for the predictable CPD/BDS addendum, BTW. Made a macro, did you?

WJ, I can add and assess the cost of government programs. Indeed, it's a part of my ongoing resume, I do it every day in the real world. When I say that to cover Obama's promises would require about three times the current federal budget, that's a very conservative estimate and means the ENTIRE federal budget, not just the discretionary budget. None of the GOP candidates come close, not by an entire order of magnitude at minimum. (Instead they make other, different promises they can't possibly keep--like reducing spending. Chuckle.)

The other difference being that a GOP prez would face a hostile Dem congress, whereas a Dem prez would face an accomodating Dem congress. The standard ploy there is to grossly underestimate the cost of the proposal(s), pass the bill, then tax like crazy when the obvious cost overruns occur.

Tully, I don't doubt it for a minute.

On the other hand, I am still in something of a state of shock. Here in California, the Republican Governor proposed universal health care (much like what Romney put in in Massachusettes). Worked it out with the Democrats in the assembly and everything. It just died in the State Senate (only one vote to report it out of committee)...because the Democrats there deemed it unaffordable! These are the same Democrats who spent us into our current financial mess in this state.

So not only is ideological purity looking like it might (please God!) be a fading spectre. It's looking like fiscal sanity may be creeping back into the Democratic Party. Now if only the Republican legislators showed some serious inclinations in that direction.

I'm an Obama supporter to be clear; but I am not really a McCain hater. However, McCain states that we need to stay in Iraq as long as necessary and also recently said that there will be "other wars" like Iraq. So, how are we going to pay for that? Does that count as spending? Why is Obama a "pinko commie" for promising to fight and spend on his (and the American people's) priorities but McCain is presidential material for wanting to spend into infinity what the American people clearly do not want? Please, you don't have to justify not wanting to vote for a Democrat - just, if you do, don't come back with that tired "he's a big spending liberal" line. Any president is going to spend money (even St. McCain) and just how much and on what. At least, Dems are talking about wanting to balance the budget at the same time. The last time the Republicans were gung ho about balanced budgets was during the Clinton presidency.

Yeah, they're talking about balancing the budget, some of 'em. What they'll do once one of their own writes the budget...that will be the test. Fact is, the total tab for Obamas promises is singularly giant, no way round that.

I don't think you'll find any "St. McCain" folks here. Cost of the war is a fair point.

The GOP Senators toed the party line pretty much lock step, few did anything to TRY to ameliorate the deficit spending since Bush got into office.

As far as Obama's proposal's go, they are like most campaign promises when reality hits. As it is the GOP did it's job well. It cut revenues ("starved the beast" ) and engaged in massive pork barrel spending increases created massive deficits, and has left massive domestic problems to be solved with little resources to solve them in a timely way.
That's good governance?

Marcus, when it comes to Obama, there's an unavoidable point here about the sheer volume and nature of promises made and their cost.

I know well from past experience that every time you are drawn here to defend a democrat your defense reflexively involves acid criticism of the GOP.

Can't we just take that as given and set it aside every once in awhile? After all, my criticism of Obama is not really related to whether the GOP's governance has been any good. The question here is whether or not we ought to accept on faith that Obama can really do better at conciliation when his policy positions range so far from his rhetorical claims of moderation and conciliation.

As far as Obama's proposals go, they are like most campaign promises when reality hits.

Which means what precisely? That you're sure he won't tryor that you're merely confident that he won't succeed.

Huge difference. If he wins and takes office with a substantial democratic majority, do you think he'll push precisely for the many programs he has proposed, and try to get them through in a from as close to what he's proposed as possible? Or do you think he'll negotiate privately and at length with all interests before crafting new proposals that truly address the concerns of fiscal and social conservatives.

If you expect the former approach, then you might as well just save us all a bunch of time and admit that yes, he's every bit the same as the next pol. If he really pushes programs of the nature and scope he's now proposing, that would NOT be a moderate and conciliatory thing. Regardless of the quality of what the GOP gave us.

And here's the thing: if you support Obama (or even Clinton) and hope to sway folks here to vote that way, you're not going to sway anyone with "Vote for the democrats because of how bad the GOP is." You're just not. That's the sort of "argument" that thrills the already-convinced. Among independents and undecideds, it simply elicits a shake of the head and a feeling that democratic supporters just don't get them.

Quite frankly I think he'll do what every democrat has done, even the overly maligned Jimmy Carter. Control spending, raise taxes if needed to balance the budget and try to get his job and agenda done with the limitations at hand and take the moderate road, unlike (acid comment here) the GOP when they had control of the nation handed to them on a silver platter and they ruled with a heavily partisan hand.

I disagree with your final comment. It's not about how bad the GOP is, it's about how bad they are at running the Federal Government given the mandate they had. Politically, if they did the job right, they could have marginalized the Democratic party for the next 50 years. The reality is, as the GOP is finding out, you can sway votes with "we can do a better job". Wonder why all these republicans are leaving the Senate and House? They can't get re-elected or they face really tough re-election battles.
I believe that competency does carry real weight, especially among independents. We lived through a PRIME example of that with the recall of Gray Davis and the installation of the Ahnold as governor of California. He got the independent vote if you 'recall'.

The sad truth about the GOP is that, to use a historical reference, they didn't make the trains run on time. People want things done for them, not to them. That's what they expect. When my girlfriend's brother walks into the VA with his cataract problems(Agent Orange crap) it should be addressed soon, not 18 months later. When a Cat-5 hurricane shows up you want FEMA in there to do a job like they did in previous hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes. You don't want to hear how the National Guard is lacking 48 billion in equipment because of Iraq and oh by the way the nation is vulnerable to major catastrophe or attack because we don't have the resources. You don't want to hear how 10 billion here got lost and wasted or ten billion there gets funneled to a corporation that the VP has a financial interest in. You want responsible stewardship.

To hear republicans say that competency doesn't matter is quite telling I think. Similar to their "deficit doesn't matter" argument of the past 7 years. With the same results.

Critter,

The cost of the Iraq war is "singularly" more giant than anything else in the federal budget ($40 billion a month in just Iraq)on top of draining the revenue with massive tax cuts. If we can't control our costs of this ill-concieved war or make the decision to actually pay for it, we are going to have even larger and larger deficits no matter what spending we cut in the rest of the budget.

I can't convince you that Obama would not be so fiscally irresponsible as to present a huge new spending budget, but I really doubt that he will. But, then the burden shouldn't be on a Democrat to explain how he is going to balance a budget (because in my lifetime and yours only a Democrat has), for me the burden is on McCain and Republicans to explain to me that if they think that this war is the "defining struggle of our generation" that will last for many more years to come and there will be more "wars", how are we gonna pay for it, reduce the deficit, and balance the budget? That is the "singular" question that everyone should be asking the Republicans. Do you really believe that McCain is going to be more fiscally responsible than Obama or Clinton? Really?

Last comment. Kevin Drum, blogger at the Washington Monthly, incorporates my thoughts nicely in this post: