In recent days, Obama has been accused (by both the McCain campaign and, uh, the Huffington Post) of morphing into a big-time flip-flopper. (I wrote about this on that other blog not to be mentioned on this blog.)

Asked by a voter Tuesday about the accusations, Obama replied, “The people who say this haven’t apparently been listening to me,” and then added, “or maybe they have. I CAN’T MAKE UP MY MIND!”

Obama blamed his “friends on the left” and certain members of the media for the criticism, asserting that, “You’re not going to agree with me on 100 percent of what I think, but don’t assume that if I don’t agree with you on something that it must be because I’m doing that politically. I may just disagree with you.”

Obama’s past and present positions on issues are being dissected, including his stances on withdrawal of troops from Iraq, public campaign financing, eavesdropping, the death penalty, guns, religion, and whether a fist bump is ever really just a fist bump.

[AP]

The last week has provided an interesting study in contrasts. When Obama announced that his upcoming trip to Iraq could lead him to refine his position on troop withdrawals, he was essentially indicating that on this particular issue he is moving from a broad idealistic pronouncement (”I want to end the war”) to an actual policy. That’s a good thing, right? Except that Obama caught massive hell for it. “He’s a flip-flopper!” “He’s adopting the McCain position!”

Meanwhile, a few days later McCain announced that he wants to cut the defecit. He didn’t say how he would do that, or that this desire would likely conflict with other desires he has expressed on the campaign trail, like staying the course in Iraq. In other words, this was a purely idealistic pronouncement, like Obama’s earlier pronouncement about ending the war: I want to cut the defecit.

Apparently though, the press corps rewards idealism over pragmatism. The headlines tell the story: “McCain Calls for Balanced Budgets” vs “Is Obama Following Bush on Iraq?” Don’t we want to encourage our elected officials to temper their schemes with “reality-based” assessments?

Both presidential candidates are scheduled to address the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) at their national convention today in D.C. (Hillary is scheduled to speak at the convention on July 11, in a final attempt to secure the Hispanic vote and win the nomination.) Personally, I’d rather see Eric Martinez from Terminator 4.

Last month McCain and Obama addressed the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, and they’ll be heading to San Diego this weekend for the National Council of La Raza conference. Next week, they will both attend a Shakira concert.

The Hispanic vote will naturally play a pivotal role in this election. A recent AP-Yahoo News poll showed that Obama currently leads McCain among Hispanics, 47 percent to 22 percent, with 26 percent undecided. However, during the Democratic primary, Hispanic voters preferred Clinton to Obama almost 2-to-1.

[The Caucus]

It slipped my notice that this year is the centenary of the Model T, which was first introduced in September 1908. Strange and diabolical forces must be at work, as this same season–Fall 2008–may look to future historians like the moment America first sought the aid of a divorce attorney in bringing to a close its abusive marriage to the automobile. One hundred years exactly. What do you give someone for their 100th wedding anniversary? Aluminum is for the 10th, pearls for the 30th, rubies for the 40th, gold for the 50th. As far as I can tell it stops at 90th, for which you give the happy couple granite (which I can’t see how they would be able to lift, being at that point at least 105 years old—[INSERT GRATUITOUS MCCAIN JOKE HERE]). It appears that the 100th anniversary is so unheard of that the gift patrol has yet to designate its material. So let me be the first to suggest that when a marriage lasts for 100 years, it should be celebrated with petroleum. Great gushing gallons of petroleum.

VA Sen. Jim Webb has officially taken himself out of the running for Obama’s VP, surprising absolutely no one but Evan Smith, who is right now on the phone with Mark Halperin.

Webb issued the following statement:

“Last week I communicated to Sen. Obama and his presidential campaign my firm intention to remain in the United States Senate, where I believe I am best equipped to serve the people of Virginia and this country. Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for vice president.”

The senator says he will vigorously campaign for Obama, and plans to secure stealth amateur volunteers with iPhones who will follow McCain, salivating over the potential for a ‘macaca’ moment.

[MSNBC]

I guess Mile High Lanes, Denver’s large-capacity bowling alley, was taken.

Laura Ingraham was having a good deal of fun this morning decrying Obama’s do-nothing-ness. One of her prime examples was today’s NYTimes story on Obama’s days as a community organizer. “The people who worked with him say he didn’t accomplish anything!” she shouted, or something like that. She’s sort of right. One of the reasons Obama left community organizing was that, as a colleague recalled him saying, “We are not making large-scale change, and I want to be involved in doing that.” The salient nugget from the Times article, the one Ingraham was excited about, is this:

It is clear that the benefit of those years to Mr. Obama dwarfs what he accomplished. Mr. Kellman said that Mr. Obama had built the organization’s following among needy residents and black ministers, but “on issues, we made very little progress, nothing that would change poverty on the South Side of Chicago.”

Now there’s a huge difference between making small-scale, incremental changes and not doing anything, but I do think there’s something worth considering about Ingraham’s point. Obama has proven himself to be extremely adept at developing organizations–but the list of accomplishments those organizations have made is not very long. There’s tremendous energy surrounding his campaign, but there’s also the danger that his campaign will begin to seem to his supporters like an end in itself, that the high that comes from being associated with his campaign will become a sort of political narcotic, substituting good vibes for engagement and action. I don’t think Obama himself has been guilty of this in his own life. But I do wonder (or worry, rather): Should he win in November, will we see the kind of surge in volunteerism and civic engagement that his campaign has, at least in theory, inspired? The left, of course, can be just as lazy as the right.

I was on my way back to Austin from my Big Bend excursion when my husband surprised me with a book on CD — Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama. Now anyone who has been a regular reader of Poll Dancing (all 10 of you) would know that I was one of the Hillary hold-outs during the primary. So I was not thrilled at the idea of listening to Obama read his memoirs for 13 hours. Between dozing on and off, however, it was pretty interesting, although I made sure to sigh audibly several times to express my displeasure at not being able to listen to Bill Clinton’s My Life for the 17th time.

In the five minutes on the road that I was able to access the Internets, I read an article on Politico about how Obama’s voice on this CD could be used against him during the general election.

Barack Obama has proved to be a difficult target to hit — just ask Hillary Rodham Clinton. Opposition researchers, though, hope that they’ve found a weapon to wound Obama in his own voice as recorded for the Grammy Award-winning audio version of his 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father.”

While candidates often have their own words turned against them in attack ads, it’s one thing to see past statements in block text and something else entirely to hear the same words in the office-seeker’s own voice.

“I think the audio version makes a much more immediate impact” than the print version of his memoir, said conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt, who has played audio excerpts from the book on his syndicated radio show. “It turns out to be very jarring to many ears to hear Obama talking about his youthful adventures, his attitudes on race.”

The snippets, though, seem tailor-made for attack ads against Obama, who at first responded to media coverage of Wright’s inflammatory remarks by asserting, “The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.”

But in the audio book, Obama recreates the very first sermon he heard Wright deliver — “The Audacity of Hope,” a phrase Obama has since used frequently, including as the title of his second book — which includes several remarks similar to those that sparked the controversy.

While listening to Obama’s voice, there were definitely times that I thought, wow, this clip could make him look bad (if taken out of context, which it most certainly would be). Still, you’ve got to hand it to Obama for not buying up every single copy on Amazon.

A clear-headed analysis of the state of the race.

McCain is frustrated. He thinks he can beat Obama (politicians are pretty confident in their own abilities). But he isn’t convinced his campaign can beat Obama’s campaign. He knows that his three-month general election head start was largely frittered away. He understands that his campaign has failed to develop an overarching message. Above all, McCain is painfully aware that he is being diminished by his own campaign.

This last point is galling. McCain has been a major figure in American public life for quite a while. And yet his campaign has made him seem somehow smaller. Obama is a first-term senator with no legislative achievements to speak of. His campaign has helped him seem bigger, more presidential.

Even Obama’s adjustments for the general election — his flip-flops — have served in an odd way to enhance his stature. Some of them suggest, after all, that he is at least trying to think seriously about what he would do if he were actually president. So Obama has achieved the important feat, as the campaign has moved on, of seeming an increasingly plausible president. McCain seems a less plausible president today than he did when he clinched the nomination.

Krugman has a good column this morning on the non-issue issue.

Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, titled his tell-all memoir “What Happened.” But a true account of modern American politics should be titled “What Didn’t Happen.” Again and again we’ve had media firestorms over supposedly revealing incidents that never actually took place.

Call it the reality-show-ization of American political reporting. The faintest whisper of a rumor that Cindy McCain wears a string bikini to breakfast every morning, or that Michelle Obama got drunk and hooked up with Reggie Love, drives the press into ecstatic frenzies of round-the-clock investigative reports and useless navel-gazing while the patently obvious fact of the nation’s crumbling ecomony barely gets the anchors out of the green room.

Good thing we have our independence.

A happy July 4th for Barack Obama, or a day of independence from reality? Can’t see the Democrats winning Montana in November, although a new poll has Obama up 5 points there on John McCain. And McCain’s only 2 points up in Georgia (Bob Barr’s at 4). Then again, Missouri and Florida are solidly in the Republican column … where they’ll end up? Really tough to know what’s what.

In any case, today’s predix: Obama 320, McCain 218.

It is well-known that Caroline Kennedy has been working as an active adviser to Obama in his selection of a VP. What doesn’t seem to be well-known is why she has emerged into the public eye to become so involved in the campaign. While some may see her emergence as sudden, Ms. Kennedy was never gone or absent. “She has raised money for the New York public schools, written and edited several books, and earned a law degree from Columbia University.” I don’t see why she should be called “reluctant,” which, in my mind, carries a negative connotation. When did privacy become passé? I find it rather refreshing when a member of a public family does not act in such a way as to remind everyone of her background or political ties.

So, to help answer the question: “Why would Barack Obama choose Caroline Kennedy, a reluctant public figure with little affection for modern politics, to vet the next Democratic vice presidential candidate?” One very important factor: her preference for privacy makes her a trustworthy choice for the job.

“One of the great assets and gifts that Caroline brings to the process is confidentiality and discretion,” said Paul G. Kirk Jr., board chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and a former Democratic National Committee chairman. “She wouldn’t be sharing what she did with anyone other than her team and her candidate.”

Another factor? Her dedication.

“She is quite selective about what she chooses to be involved in,” said John Seigenthaler Sr., a member of the Profile in Courage award committee at the Kennedy library. “For the most part, it is fair to say those interests have focused on the work of the JFK library, but there are other areas where she has not hesitated. People who haven’t observed her in those roles might be surprised that she was willing to accept it… I wouldn’t be surprised that she is taking this on as virtually a full-time assignment, because that is just her way. Once she decides that this is something that is important, her commitment will be absolute.”

Am I imagining it, or has this campaign season featured more guilt-by-association than any in recent memory? So many top advisors and former friends have been “thrown under the bus” by the various candidates it’s a miracle the bus can get any traction at all. Wes Clark is only the latest to join this long and distinguished list of persona get ridda–there was Samantha Power, Obama’s NAFTA guy with the funny name, John Haggee, Charles Black, Bill Cunningham, Geraldine Ferraro, and of course, the big toxic fish, the top farting dog, Reverand Wright. In fact, the sheer magnitude of the Reverend Wright scandal, and Obama’s response to it, took guilt by association to a whole new level. This whole election is starting to seem like a contest for who can do better apologies for their dumb friends.

Everyone needs to learn from W. When a friend makes a blunder, no matter how large, the proper response is a huge promotion.

Although there is no Joan Wilder or Jack T. Colton in this [news] story, there are Senator John McCain and President Álvaro Uribe in Cartagena, Colombia, discussing free trade and human rights, in order “to promote [McCain’s] foreign policy and national security credentials”.

The trade deal, which would lift tariffs on the majority of goods traded between the United States and Colombia, has recently moved from the political sidelines to the center of the presidential campaign. Mr. McCain supports the deal as essential to free trade and relations with a crucial ally that receives about $600 million a year in counterinsurgency and anti-narcotics aid, but Mr. Obama and many Democrats oppose it because of workers’ fears about job losses overseas and American labor’s concern over the killings of union leaders in Colombia.

Even before Mr. McCain left for Colombia, John J. Sweeney, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., issued a statement calling the trip “yet one more example of how out of touch he is with working families, and how close he is to corporate special interests.”

Mr. Sweeney added, “hundreds of trade unionists have been systematically murdered, tortured, kidnapped and threatened by paramilitary organizations during the tenure of President Alvaro Uribe, yet Senator McCain will tout the supposed benefits of the proposed U.S.-Colombia F.T.A in the resort city of Cartagena.”

Mr. McCain, with Mr. Uribe standing by, acknowledged that there were still significant problems on several fronts in Colombia, which is beset by left-wing guerillas, right-wing paramilitary death squads and a large drug trafficking industry. (The Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that up to 90 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States comes from Colombia, and coca cultivation is surging, despite longstanding American efforts to help Colombia destroy the crops.) But Mr. McCain said that Mr. Uribe had made significant gains.

On a side note, “Mr. McCain had promised before the trip that he would not publicly criticize Mr. Obama…on foreign soil, saying political partisanship ended at the water’s edge”, where those pesky crocodiles lie in waiting… oh wait, no, that part is only in the movie. Anyway, his promise seemed to have an emphasis on the word soil, because “his pledge did not include a session with reporters on his campaign plane en route to Colombia, he called Mr. Obama “a protectionist” and cast him as ignorant about economic forces in the United States. “We just have a difference of opinion,” Mr. McCain said, “and I’m a student of history.”

Note to Cindy: Since you won’t be spending time in say, Cancún, you might want to choose a more subtle color of dress for your visit to Mexico on Wednesday. In my opinion, that blindingly-bright number that is pictured detracts from your husband’s “I’m just your everyday (older) man” look, not to mention it exudes something more along the lines of “arm candy” rather than modesty or humility. But then, what would I know? I only spent four and a half months there.