Time magazine is using the end of the Supreme Court term to highlight what they call "Obama’s Supreme Move to the Center." Reporter Massimo Calabresi boasted that Republicans won’t be able to drag out that old saw about Obama being a big lib:
When the Supreme Court issues rulings on hot-button issues like gun control and the death penalty in the middle of a presidential campaign, Republicans could be excused for thinking they'll have the perfect opportunity to paint their Democratic opponent as an out-of-touch social liberal. But while Barack Obama may be ranked as one of the Senate's most liberal members, his reactions to this week's controversial court decisions showed yet again how he is carefully moving to the center ahead of the fall campaign.
Calabresi quoted how Obama expressed support for the death penalty for child rape and then expressed support for the decision against the D.C. gun ban. As he quoted McCain spokesmen declaring amazement at Obama’s claim he’s "always" supported an individual right to gun ownership, the Time reporter didn’t seek to determine whether Obama was telling the truth. (Well, no.) He was too busy underlining how the McCain people were afraid of Obama’s centrist tendencies:
Politicians are always happy to get a chance to accuse opponents of flip-flopping, but McCain's team may be more afraid of Obama's shift to the center than their words betray. Obama has some centrist positions to highlight in the general election campaign on foreign policy and national security, social issues and economics. His position on the child rape death penalty case, for example, is in line with his record in Illinois of supporting the death penalty. He is on less solid ground on the gun ban as his campaign said during the primary that he believed the D.C. law was constitutional.
A top legal adviser to Obama says both cases are consistent with his previous positions. "I don't see him as moving in his statements on the death penalty or the gun case," says Cass Sunstein, a former colleague of Obama's at the University of Chicago. Sunstein says Obama is "not easily characterized" on social issues, and says the Senator's support for allowing government use of the Ten Commandments in public, in some cases, is another example of his unpredictability on such issues. On the issue of gun control, he says Obama has always expressed a belief that the Second Amendment guarantees a private right to bear arms, as the court found Thursday.
But Obama's sudden social centrism would sound more convincing in a different context. Since he wrapped up the primary earlier this month and began to concentrate on the independent and moderate swing voters so key in a general election, Obama has consistently moved to the middle. He hired centrist economist Jason Furman, known for defending the benefits of globalization and private social security accounts, to the displeasure of liberal economists. On Father's Day, Obama gave a speech about the problem of absentee fathers and the negative effects it has on society, in particular scolding some fathers for failing to "realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child — it's the courage to raise one." Last week, after the House passed a compromise bill on domestic spying that enraged liberals and civil libertarians, Obama announced that though he was against other eavesdropping compromises in the past, this time he was going to vote for it.
Notice how an Obama-supporting professor's word that Obama has "always" been a Second Amendment man is all the proof that Time needs.
Of course, Time's declaration of Obama's "social centrism" doesn't include any of his positions on abortion, homosexuality, or any other social issue on which he's demonstrated stark liberalism. The article's purpose seems designed only to argue that Republicans should not be believed when they use the L word.
