OBAMA VERSUS MCCAIN:

WHO’S THE REAL REFORMER AND MAVERICK?

OBAMA VERSUS MCCAIN:

WHO’S THE REAL REFORMER AND MAVERICK?

This presidential election will be one of the most important in recent years, and because of that, the record and platform of Sen. Barack Obama, who until recently was simply unknown to most voters, must be examined in greater detail.  At first blush, of course, Sen. Obama seems like a nice guy: young, new, attractive, and energetic.  But a deeper look at the candidate shows that despite his carefully calculated campaign for “change we can believe in,” or his claim that he represents a new kind of politics, one above the old partisan fray, he is a deeply flawed candidate.  We’re all understandably suffering from Bush fatigue and want a change, of course, but simply voting for the candidate who positions himself as the most anti-Bush candidate doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll get the right kind of change in Washington, or that things won’t actually get worse.  

I believe that an honest look at the record of Sen. Obama and his campaign exposes the general perception that he is a reformer who will change the way Washington works as completely, breathtakingly false.  This analysis discusses five general areas:

A look at Sen. Obama’s record in Illinois as part of the corrupt Daly and Cook County Democratic machines

A review of Sen. Obama’s record of support for special interests in the Senate

A detailed review of millions of dollars in contributions by special interests and lobbyists to Sen. Obama’s campaign

A brief review of the current financial crisis on Wall Street and Sen. McCain’s record on related issues

A list of major issues on which Sen. Obama has flip flopped during the course of this campaign

A list of alleged flip flops by Sen. McCain and issues on where he’s differed from Bush

A plea for the virtues of divided government

His Chicago Background

A look at Sen. Obama’s past in Chicago machine politics shows that he is and always has been in the back pocket of all the usual special interest groups that make up the modern Democratic Party.  From public and private sector unions to extreme environmental organizations to the AARP to trial lawyers, he has rarely voted at odds with any of their insider agendas.   Yet now that he’s won the Democratic nomination by playing to that very liberal base of his Party, he has engaged in, during just the past three or four months, a head-spinning series of flip flops not seen in modern presidential history, including on his signature issue, the war in Iraq.  Now, we all know candidates move toward the center once they’ve received their respective nominations, but rarely have candidates changed their positions as extensively as Barack Obama has.  I’ll outline those flip flops in just a moment, as well as Sen. McCain’s changes in some of his positions, but let me give you just a brief summary of Obama’s background before he got to the Senate less than three years ago.  It’s completely at odds with his image as an agent of change.

Despite his mantra of change, or perhaps because of it, most people don’t realize that he was shaped and molded by the corrupt Cook County Democratic machine, as well as the Daley machine in Chicago.  He became a state senator in 1996 because of their support, and they never support candidates who don’t support them.  He was a stooge of the Stroger political machine that ran Cook County and won his first election by having his Democratic primary challengers thrown off the ballot by challenging their petition signatures, including those of his political patron, Sen. Alice Palmer.  When real progressives rose to challenge the machine and end the massive corruption in Cook County, Obama endorsed the machine, not “change” and “reform.”   Even after he became a U.S. Senator in 2004, he continued to enable the corrupt Stroger machine, which had turned Cook County, in the words of Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, “into a bog of waste, cronyism, and incompetence.”  When a reform candidate finally arose in 2006 to challenge John Stroger, Obama sat on the sidelines and once again let the machine win, when his opposition would likely have meant victory for the reformers.  “Change we can believe in?”  Not for Chicago and Cook County.  

Barack Obama had a mundane and undistinguished career as state senator.  He had few legislative achievements, his most notable being a weak ethics bill that passed the state senate 52-4, which tells you how effective it really was. And it was during this period that he engaged in the peculiar practice in the Illinois senate of voting “present” over 130 times instead of voting yes or no, usually on controversial bills.  

His patron in the state senate was another corrupt Chicago politician, Sen. Emil Jones, who would take bills nearly through the legislative process and then attach Obama’s name to them to help groom him for higher office, and it was he who helped Obama get the 2004 Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, which was tantamount to winning the general election.  

When Obama got to the Senate in 2005, he dutifully sought an $11 million earmark for Chicago State University, one of Mr. Jones’s pet projects, and in his short Senate career, Obama has requested over $740 million in earmarks (Sen. McCain, on the other hand, has requested zero earmarks.)  Now you might think that Obama has now risen above the machine style politics that put him where he is today, but the Associated Press recently reported (September 18) that  in his effort to reassure his big donors, he’s been telling them “that he’s been schooled by Chicago politics” and knows how to fight back.  Is that really something to brag about, even behind closed doors?  

And just this year, the director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform asked Sen. Obama to lend his support to a new reform bill in the Illinois legislature being opposed by his old crony, Sen. Emil Jones.  All Sen. Obama had to do was call his old friend and urge him to push through this bill, which would have finally outlawed the practice of asking companies bidding on government contracts to contribute to the campaigns of the officials ladling out contracts (yes, that’s legal in Chicago).  Sen. Obama refused to do it.  How can anyone who labels himself a progressive and reformer side with such a corrupt practice?  As Chicago Tribune columnist Dennis Byrne wrote on the website RealClearPolitics.com, “Agent of change, my foot.” 

Obama’s Record in Washington, D.C.

What is Sen. Obama’s record of reform in Washington?  Has he challenged the various special interests and their efforts to obtain special privileges and taxpayer dollars?  More often than not, the answer is no.  On the campaign trail, he’s fond of talking about wanting change from the Bush years.  But he voted for the Bush/Cheney energy bill.  You remember that bill, the one that Democrats charged was written by Cheney and the oil companies, chock full of tax breaks and subsidies for Big Oil.  Obama voted for it, while Sen. McCain voted against it, explicitly because of those tax breaks and subsidies.  Sen. Obama voted for the president’s expensive, pork-filled farm bill that continues the practice of subsidizing rich farmers and agribusiness.  Sen. McCain voted against it. 

Perhaps no government program better illustrates how special interests rule Washington than ethanol subsidies.  Year after year, presidential candidates go to Iowa and prostrate themselves before the ethanol farmers, promising bigger and better handouts, including Sen. Obama, who, according to the New York Times (“Obama Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol,” June 23, 2008), even has ethanol lobbyists on his campaign staff.  Only one presidential candidate went to Iowa and said no to the ethanol lobby: Sen. McCain, who has opposed ethanol subsidies throughout his Senate career.  Who’s the reformer here, and who isn’t?  Who’s the real maverick, and who’s the imposter?

In spite of this, we hear the constant refrain from the Obama campaign that McCain is somehow the handmaiden of Washington lobbyists simply because he has lobbyists supporting his campaign.   But to anyone familiar with Washington, this assertion is astoundingly hypocritical.  All presidential candidates, including Barack Obama and every other Democrat who ran this year, have lobbyists actively working for their election, if not on their paid staffs.  And as reported by the Washington Post on September 16, the McCain campaign issued a blanket directive back in May stating that no one working for the campaign may be a registered lobbyist or foreign agent, and this is also the policy of the Obama campaign.  So it is disingenuous at the least for the Obama campaign to run a commercial, as it is now doing, that lists various McCain campaign officials like Rick Davis as lobbyists.  In fact, all the people listed in the commercial are former lobbyists who haven’t held those positions for years.  Even the Washington Post has taken the Obama campaign to task for giving the impression that these men are registered lobbyists.   Sen. Obama’s paid staff, of course, also includes former lobbyists.  But this really just scratches the surface of his hypocrisy.

Obama’s Deep Ties to Washington Lobbyists

Despite Sen. Obama’s claims that he is above all the special interests, the Hill, a Capital Hill newspaper that covers Congress, has reported that “Sen. Obama is benefiting from the support of well-connected Washington lobbyists even though he has prohibited his campaign from accepting contributions from them and political action committees.”  His campaign has conceded that this prohibition is but a gesture.  “It’s not going to stop the sway that money has over policies or that special interests have over legislation,” admits Obama spokesman Bill Burton.  Indeed.  

In fact, unions representing teachers, government employees, and private sector workers and leftist groups such as MoveOn.org are pouring millions into Obama’s coffers or into independent expenditures on his behalf. But he receives just as much support from Big Business as he does Big Labor and the left.  During his short Senate career, Obama’s love of corporate money and lobbyists has reaped rich rewards for his PAC, the Hope Fund.  Among his top five contributors during 2003-2008 were Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup.  In that same period, he has raised over $23 million from lawyers and law firms, $10 million from securities and investment firms, and $6 million from the real estate industry (see  HYPERLINK "http://www.opensecrets.org" http://www.opensecrets.org for more details). 

During the 2007-2008 election cycle, Sen. Obama was the third highest recipient of insurance industry contributions, for a total of $1,147,886.  His campaign has raised more contributions over $1000 than either Sen. McCain or Sen. Clinton, and his network of campaign “bundlers,” i.e., those fundraisers who collect contributions of $50,000 or more, rivals that of President Bush during the 2004 campaign.  

According to the International Herald Tribune (August 6, 2008), “an analysis of campaign finance records shows that about two-thirds of his bundlers are concentrated in four major industries: law, securities and investments, real estate, and entertainment.  Lawyers make up the largest group at about 130, with many working for forms that also have lobbying arms.  At least 100 Obama bundlers are top executives or brokers from investment businesses.  About 40 others come from the real estate industry.”  And while he enjoys bashing the oil companies and urging a windfall profits tax, Obama didn’t mind taking money from Chevron, BP and Exxon Mobil.  In fact, Obama is one of the top ten recipients of oil and gas industry money at $109,912 (visit  HYPERLINK "http://wizbangblue.com" http://wizbangblue.com for more details).  

So when Sen. Obama stated last November that “I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their day of setting the agenda in Washington are over… They have not funded my campaign,” he was telling a bald-faced lie, and he continues to deceive the public about his addiction to special interest money.  As erstwhile Obama supporter Allison Kilkenny wrote on the leftist Huffington Post blog, lobbyists “have sunk nearly twice as much money into Obama as they have McCain, [and they] will demand favors in exchange for their generosity.”  Keep that in mind every time you hear Sen. Obama mock Sen. McCain for criticizing special interests.

The Current Financial Crisis

Also keep in mind when you read about the current crisis on Wall Street that Sen. Obama is the second highest recipient of contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two federally chartered corporations charged with stabilizing our mortgage industry.  Sen. Obama has raked in $126,349, second only to Sen. Chris Dodd at $165,400 dollars.  In fact, Democrats have received 57 percent of all political contributions made by these two agencies.  See more details at  HYPERLINK "http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html" http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html.

Sen. Obama, of course, has been blaming the current financial crisis on the Republican philosophy of deregulation, blithely ignoring the fact that we have a larger regulatory structure now than under President Clinton.  Anyone familiar with the subject, however, knows that the broad deregulation of the financial markets that passed Congress in 1999 was supported by both Republicans and Democrats, including President Clinton (who signed the bill) and his Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers.  Obama never mentions that.

An even greater example of Sen. Obama’s intellectual dishonesty is the fact that Robert Rubin, another former Clinton treasury secretary and now a top advisor to Sen. Obama himself , also supported the same deregulation bill and recently told the Washington Post (September 23, 2008) that the bill “had no impact, zero” on the current crisis.  Yet Obama keeps repeating the same talking point over and over.  

For a brief history (grounded in reality) of how we got into this mess, see  HYPERLINK "http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091902808.html" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091902808.html.

In any event, Sen. McCain’s real record in this area was outlined in a recent Washington Post editorial taking Sen. Obama to task for his distortions of McCain’s record.  See  HYPERLINK "http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/18/AR2008091803159.html" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/18/AR2008091803159.html for an honest assessment of where Sen. McCain stands on this issue.

Now some might say in defense of Sen. Obama: They all do it.  That argument, however, simply doesn’t wash, because Sen. Obama has repeatedly held himself to a higher standard of political ethics, one that he has never met yet continues to promote.  He castigates his rivals, both Democrats and Republicans, for the same practices he engages in on a routine basis.  

Obama’s Flip Flops

Truth be told, he has become the master of illusion over the past few months.  He has gone from being a self-proclaimed progressive, winning adulation from the hard left, to now positioning himself as a centrist above the old partisan divisions.  In actuality, it’s hard to know where he stands considering those numerous flip flops I mentioned earlier.  Let’s look at some of them:   

Public Financing)  After repeatedly speaking out in favor of  public financing of presidential campaigns and proposing that both major party candidates agree to participate in the public campaign financing system, he suddenly reversed course after he won the Democratic nomination and rejected it, making him the first candidate since the Watergate-era reforms to refuse to participate in public financing of a presidential campaign.  A wise move financially?  Apparently so, but so much for his promises of reform.  Is this the kind of change he keeps referring to?

FISA)  Sen. Obama denounced this Bush-backed bill establishing new standards for federal wiretapping all through the primaries as part of his effort to win support from the vocal anti-war segment of his party, and he promised them in no uncertain terms he would vote against it on the basis of the immunity it offered phone companies for their participation in government wiretapping.  But when the bill came up, he voted for it, directly repudiating his earlier stance and leaving his antiwar, anti-wiretapping backers reeling in disbelief.  Another broken promise.

Gun Control) During his entire political career and the presidential primaries, he supported strict gun control, including support for perhaps the most draconian gun ban in the country, Washington, D.C.’s.   Yet when the Supreme Court issued its June decision in the historic Heller case striking down D.C.’s gun ban, Sen. Obama hailed it as protecting the individual right to bear arms, saying he agreed with that view and that the court’s decision reflected “what I’ve been saying consistently.”  In truth, this was a complete about face for Sen. Obama, and it was obviously designed to appeal to gun-owning blue-collar and rural voters and compensate for the political damage of having been secretly recorded at a California fundraiser in April bemoaning rural voters who “cling” to their guns. 

Free Trade) Sen. Hillary and Clinton and Sen. Obama fell all over themselves during the primary season denouncing so-called free trade agreements like NAFTA as corporate give-aways that hurt union workers, and Obama promised not only that he would not support new agreements but that he would revisit NAFTA and other agreements already in effect, a slap in the face to our two largest export markets, Canada and Mexico.  He no doubt realized this stance would have serious repercussions, because it was revealed shortly thereafter that one of his campaign advisors on trade met with Canadian officials shortly after his NAFTA-bashing remarks to tell them he didn’t really mean what he was saying publicly.  Now that he has the nomination, he says that his previous comments were “overheated,” but his union backers are still counting on his hardline, anti-trade positions.  It’s hard to know which Obama we’ll get if he’s elected.

Raising Taxes)  During the primaries, Obama expressed support for raising social security taxes on anyone making more than $100,000, eliminating the cap on such taxes that has been in effect for many decades.  Just recently, after justifiable criticism, he’s changed that threshold to $250,000.  But his new position is based on household income, meaning it would affect millions of middle class families, as would his increase in the income tax.  He has stated support for increasing both corporate income tax and the capital gains taxes, which of course would trickle down to consumers picking up the bill.  And now he’s waffling on when and if he’d raise these various taxes in light of the economic downturn.  

He has changed his positions as well on the threat of Iran and whether he would have preconditions for talks (first no, then yes), the status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (he changed his position within the course of one day), late term abortions (he now opposes them), and government support for faith-based initiatives (he now supports President Bush’s program with minor revisions), among others.  

Iraq War)  But perhaps the most significant change of all has been on his signature issue, the war in Iraq.  His claim to fame during the entire campaign has been his original opposition to going to war in Iraq, and he pilloried Hillary Clinton for her original support for the war.  He said in no uncertain terms that he supported a date-certain timeline for withdrawal, promising to have all troops out by mid-2010, and he bragged on his website that the surge would not only fail but probably make things worse.  But now that also appears to have all been subjected to his disturbing pattern of waffling and shifting to gain votes. 

Even before he had the nomination sewn up, one of his top foreign policy advisors was quoted as saying Obama would leave behind a force of up to 60,000 troops in Iraq for “training” purposes, startling many of his erstwhile leftist supporters since this is the kind of open-ended commitment President Bush has been pilloried for.  But Sen. Obama’s changes over just the past couple of months on his plan for Iraq have been astounding.  He now says the pace of withdrawal must be based the “conditions on the ground,” an explicit rejection of a fixed timetable, and that he would develop a withdrawal plan in consultation with General Petraeus.  Obama now says “stability” is the number one criteria to determine how quickly our troops leave, which is no different than Sen. McCain’s position.  He has even pulled down the page on his website denouncing the surge, and he recently told Bill O’Reilly that it “has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,” even though he still won’t say he was wrong to oppose it.  

Now, from my perspective, these new positions on Iraq are all very reasonable.  The radically different conditions in Iraq now actually make some kind of “timeline” for withdrawal reasonable and practical, and I certainly hope we can have all combat troops out by 2010 or soon thereafter.  But how do you trust a candidate who was supposed to be above the Washington routine, the double talk, the pandering, yet who can essentially reverse his plan of action on his signature issue, not to mention all the others I’ve itemized? 

Perhaps what he wrote in his autobiography The Audacity of Hope provides a partial answer:  “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”  When you’re constantly shifting positions, of course, that’s easy for people to do, but it hardly constitutes “change we can believe in.”  It sounds very much like more of the same.  

McCain’s “Flip Flops”

Again, the charge that McCain and other candidates also flip flop misses two points: First, Sen. Obama has deliberately held himself to a higher standard, so in my view, the argument that “everybody does it” isn’t a legitimate defense.  The second point is that while Sen. McCain has changed his position on several important issues, those changes don’t come close to Sen. Obama’s record of changes, either in their number or their rapid succession over a short period of time, which is really what defines the term flip flop.  What has Sen. McCain changed his positions on?  Has he engaged in the same pattern?

Immigration)  Obama supporters charge that Sen. McCain has repudiated his support for broad-based immigration reform and caved in to the conservative base of his party, a charge that is simply not true.  McCain was a sponsor of a bill last year, along with Sen. Ted Kennedy, that would have instituted a broad series of immigration reforms, including a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a bill that was supported by President Bush as well.  This was after he had announced his campaign for president, and he was denounced by conservatives for his position.  The outspoken campaign against it rolled over the bill, and as a consequence, Sen. McCain (along with many others) now says we must first pass an enforcement bill before we address the broader issues of immigration reform.  He has not changed his support for those reforms at all, and in fact, he reiterated his support for them earlier this year at a conference of Hispanic officials and activists.  His strategy for achieving comprehensive immigration reform has changed in light of the defeat of last year’s bill, but his goal of such reform has not.

Taxes)  Sen. McCain is pilloried for now supporting President Bush’s income tax cuts that he opposed when they passed in 2001.  But McCain announced his change of heart  about them not in the heat of a campaign but back in 2006, after they had been in effect for several years.  He stated at the time that to repeal those cuts now that they’ve been in effect would not only constitute a tax increase but would inhibit the economic recovery that had finally taken hold after the recession that followed the dotcom bust in 2000, which worsened after 9/11, a position certainly shared by most economists.  Of course, both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama also say they would retain the Bush tax cuts except for those making $250,000 a year or more, yet they have not been accused by McCain’s critics of flip flopping on the issue.

The Religious Right)  In 2000, Sen. McCain was famously quoted as denouncing the Rev. Jerry Falwell and others like him as “agents of intolerance,” a description they certainly earned and deserved.  Sen. McCain is now accused of flip flopping because he made a truce with the religious right several years ago in light of the fact that they form a significant chunk of the party’s base.  But this hardly constitutes a flip flop.  Sen. McCain is not and never has been a foot soldier for the Right, and Religious Right activists and leaders have always considered him unreliable at best, an enemy at worst.  After all, Sen. McCain helped kill one of their signature pieces of legislation, the federal marriage amendment, and they have never forgiven him for that.  He supports stem cell research and believes religion is a private matter, rarely discussing his personal views on the subject.  In fact, he has been far less forthcoming on discussing his religion in public than Sen. Obama, who is undertaking major efforts to woo the evangelical community, including rolling out a new line of “faith merchandise.”  Talk about pandering.  

To anyone who knows how deeply disliked Sen. McCain has been (and still is) by most of the religious right leaders such as Rev. James Dobson and others, the charge that Sen. McCain is somehow now their foot soldier is laughable.  

Sen. McCain is certainly not where he should be on the wider topic of gay rights, but he is generally a moderate on social issues and certainly open to change.  The fact that he supports the California marriage amendment (incorrectly, in my view) should not be a disqualifier unless it also disqualified one from voting for Sen. John Kerry in 2004, when he endorsed not one but two state marriage amendments.  

Oil Drilling) This is indeed one issue on which Sen. McCain has changed his position, and rightfully so.  When the current ban on offshore drilling was put into place, oil was about $20 a barrel.  When it reached nearly $150 a barrel, it’s time to change our energy policy and strategy, and that’s what McCain proposed.  Although the price has now dropped back from its high to around $100 a barrel (as of this writing), the fact is that this country has hundreds of billions of gallons of recoverable oil and oil shale that are now off limits, not to mention natural gas.  In fact, many Democrats (and most voters) also support increased energy exploration, including an expansion of nuclear power, so in my opinion, Sen. McCain’s support of more exploration is the right policy.  He still supports keeping ANWR off limits, again contrary to the belief of his party’s base.  

Although the Obama campaign belittles the term, Sen. McCain is still a maverick, while Obama was never one.  McCain has bucked his party and President Bush on major issues time after time, whether the issue was global warming, support for stem cell research, keeping ANWR off limits to development, background checks for gun show sales, the federal marriage amendment, closing down Guantanamo, and opposing torture of terrorist suspects, to name a few.  

 Even on the issues of American diplomacy and nuclear proliferation, the New York Times wrote recently, “Mr. McCain has strikingly different views from Mr. Bush, and while he shares the president’s goals in Iraq, he was at times an outspoken critic of the way the war was managed.”  This refrain we hear repeatedly from the Obama campaign that McCain would mean four more years of Bush is simply ridiculous, I believe, as any objective review of McCain’s voting history and his current positions reveals.  

The simple fact is that Sen. Obama doesn’t even come close to Sen. McCain in the number of issues or votes on which he’s challenged his party’s orthodoxy.  

The Virtues of “Divided Government”

In the final analysis, perhaps the most compelling reason of all to support Sen. McCain, even if you don’t agree with all his positions (I don’t), or even with his party, is the advantage of divided government, i.e., deliberately voting to keep the presidency and Congress controlled by different parties.  This is perhaps the greatest check on political power, hubris, and corruption available to voters today.  And, in fact, the economy has done consistently better under divided government than when it was controlled entirely by either the Democrats or Republicans.   That means greater economic growth and lower unemployement.

As noted by Cato Institute chairman William Niskanen, during the past 50 years, “government spending has increased an average of only 1.73 percent annually during periods of divided government.  This number more than triples, to 5.26 percent, for periods of unified government.”  President Clinton’s administration illustrates the former and President Bush’s administration illustrates the latter, and both administrations strayed substantially from the traditional positions of their respective base.   

A great deal is at stake in this election, and we need a candidate of independent thought and action, someone who can provide balance to the Democrat-controlled Congress, someone who is not afraid to step on some toes, so for all reasons and more, I urge you to take a hard look at Sen. McCain versus Sen. Obama, in spite of what your political predispositions might be.  I’ve necessarily only skimmed the surface of all the issues voters are thinking about during this campaign (some important, some frivolous).  Feel free to write me with comments and questions.  The more informed voters are about issues and candidates, the better off we’ll all be, regardless of who wins in November.

David Lampo

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