Obama is not any more sauntering but galloping — racing real fast — to the political middle

Barack Obama is galloping to the political middle.  There have been many decisions by Obama to signal and amplify that to the electorate.

Add two more decisions to this litany –

First, Obama’s view on late-term abortions.  In an interview this week with Relevant, a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain “a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother.” Obama then added: “Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.”

Second, without growing defensive about his new and improvised position on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Obama sent out a thought web-defense of his decision.  There are many disappointed supporters but they have to accept it.

The New York Times finds this trot to the political middle unseemly.  But Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic does not think so.  The Gall Up poll finds that, at least for now, the electorate is accepting of Obama’s changed positions — may be that will change if the electorate is reminded repeatedly about Obama’s changes and if there is some other event that makes the electorate to reassess Obama’s character.

Here is Marc Ambinder, “So his admirers say that one of Barack Obama’s most attractive intellectual attributes is his willingness to refine his positions as evidence changes — he has what occupational psychologists would call “conceptual insight.” They contrast this to President Bush’s incurious stubborness. Why, then, is the Obama campaign so allergic to the suggestion that, yes, sometimes Obama changes his mind as conditions warrant? Claims of consistency — which is the hobgoblin of small politics — just aren’t that credible sometimes. And aren’t they running against the type of inflexible consistency that they associate with President Bush?”

Tags: Barack Obama, FISA, Gall Up, John McCain, Late-term abortions, Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic, The New York Times