This Nails It

I've been saying this for awhile (see here and here), but Michael Gerson has also noticed the fraud that is the notion that Barack Obama is some sort of moderate. Obama: A False Moderate?

It was not quite a Roger Mudd moment, but it was close. Mudd, you might recall, posed a simple question to Ted Kennedy in 1979: "Why do you want to be president?" Kennedy's vague, unprepared answer raised serious questions about his candidacy.

Recently, Jake Tapper of ABC News asked a similarly blunt question of Barack Obama: "Have you ever worked across the aisle in such a way that entailed a political risk for yourself?" Obama's response is worth quoting in full: "Well, look, when I was doing ethics reform legislation, for example, that wasn't popular with Democrats or Republicans. So any time that you actually try to get something done in Washington, it entails some political risks. But I think the basic principle which you pointed out is that I have consistently said, when it comes to solving problems, like nuclear proliferation or reducing the influence of lobbyists in Washington, that I don't approach this from a partisan or ideological perspective."

For a candidate running as a centrist reformer, this is pretty weak tea. Ethics reform and nuclear proliferation are important issues but they have hardly put Obama in the liberal doghouse. When I recently asked two U.S. senators who are personally favorable to Obama to name a legislative issue where Obama has vocally bucked his own party, neither could cite a single instance.

The contrast to John McCain is stark. Contrary to some depictions, McCain is not a moderate. He is a conservative with a habit of massive, eye-stretching heresy. He has supported gun control legislation, the expansion of the AmeriCorps service program, and campaign finance and comprehensive immigration reform -- leaving many conservatives in fits of sputtering, red-faced outrage. He joined the moderate Gang of 14 on judicial nominations and supports mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions.

McCain has the scars to show for it. Sen. Mitch McConnell dismissed McCain's campaign finance legislation as "stunningly stupid." Another Republican senator, quoted on background in 2001, vented: "Every time McCain accuses President Bush's budget of favoring the rich or sides with Sen. Ted Kennedy on his patients' bill of rights or Sen. Joe Lieberman on more gun control or all those other Democrats on restricting the First Amendment on campaign finance reform, it's news only because he's a Republican. It's 'man bites dog,' and it hurts us far more than if he were attacking our philosophy and agenda as an independent or a Democrat."

I have not heard of a single Democrat who has a similar beef with Obama. Maybe this is because Obama has so often only managed to muster up the courage to vote "Present" on anything even vaguely controversial, but it certainly isn't because he's so damn moderate.