All About Obama

You may have blinked and missed it, but John McCain has been in Colombia and Mexico the last two days, not that the mainstream media much cares (at least compared to his latest staff shake-up).

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Barack Obama's upcoming trip to Europe and the Middle East will draw 100 times more coverage, and that may prove to be an understatement.

While few will admit it, most journalists just think Obama is a better story, and a story that sells in terms of circulation and ratings. And in a political sense, Obama is also the story. Much of the debate swirls around who he is, what he believes and whether he has what it takes to be president. McCain is a familiar figure who many view as a default choice for the White House, an experienced hand running a not very exciting campaign. Obama is seen as an inspiring figure who still has something to prove, with his race providing an added layer of complexity for his candidacy.

That is why the Great Flip-Flop Debate matters--for both candidates. Obama has changed his position on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, public financing, government wiretapping and the D.C. gun ban, opening himself up to attacks that he is abandoning his principles (known, more benignly, as moving to the center). McCain has changed his positions on the Bush tax cuts, offshore oil drilling, veterans' educational benefits and other issues.

But Obama seems to be taking the greater battering on the matter, maybe because the GOP is attacking more effectively, or he's the relative newcomer, or, as I said, because he's the story.

Most voters aren't following every twist and turn of the FISA debate. But they want to get a general sense of what a candidate stands for, and whether he bends with the wind. Flip-flopping makes sense sometimes, if you can offer a convincing rationale. But the game seems to be denying that you're doing any such thing and dismissing past explanations as "inartful."

One last point, amplified nicely by the New Republic's Noam Scheiber, is that pols do this all the time, and Obama hasn't been running as an ordinary pol:

"What 'serial exaggerator' was to Al Gore, and 'wind-surfing flip-flopper' was to John Kerry, so will 'shameless opportunist' be to Barack Obama. To highlight the point for the non-discriminating and the mentally obtuse, the GOP even hauled out its chief meme-smith, Karl Rove, to pronounce it thus. To which the proper response for an Obama supporter should be: Right on! John McCain may win the contest over 'who is willing to put principle above personal ambition and self-interest,' as Rove wrote in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal. But that contest will have very little to do with who wins this fall's election . . .

"It's highly unlikely that McCain will succeed at making Obama look typical or himself especially atypical. For one thing, Obama is young and black and exceptionally thoughtful and eloquent. He could spend every day between now and the election executing plays from the 'typical pol' playbook (not a very interesting read, I assure you) and still look far from typical on November 4.

"Likewise, it's going to be exceedingly difficult for McCain to fend off the taint of typicalness himself . . . McCain has spent much of the last few months moving rightward on issues like tax cuts, immigration, and energy, which is a double-whammy of typicality. First, it moves McCain closer to the party's ideological mainstream. Second, it requires a decent-amount of flip-flopping--a chronic typical-pol maneuver.

"To believe McCain can nonetheless get away with labeling his opponent a typical pol without having the charge boomerang on him reflects a gross misunderstanding of campaign journalism. The political press corps will gladly recite McCain's typical-pol indictment of Obama. But, each time they do, they'll feel obliged to catalogue McCain's own offenses in this regard. In fact, this is already happening."

Time's Michael Scherer raises the question of keeping score: