Obama: Honeymoon Over

Sigh. And sigh again. I have been moderately excited about Barack Obama as a presidential candidate, especially in contrast to the nominees that the GOP produced. And I probably would have voted for Asmodeus if he was Hillary Clinton’s opponent. I don’t think I’ve blinded myself to the planks of Obama’s platform that are in some conflict with  my morals and ideals, but I considered (and still do, I guess) his potential positive effects to be more than sufficient to outweigh them, when compared to the other presidential alternatives.

Sadly, the other shoe has begun to drop. Perhaps, now that he’s no longer campaigning against a fellow Democrat for Democratic Party votes, he’s shifting strategies, being “pragmatic,” or something. This means, apparently, campaigning like a true politician. The most recent annoyances:

1. HE SIGNED THE FRICKIN’ FISA BILL! To be fair, he expressed deep regrets and a promise to keep fighting, but he still signed it. He signed it despite a promise last Fall to filibuster any bill with retroactive telecom immunity in it. So, the value of Obama’s promises is now lower. Not as low as McCain’s (not for a long while, yet), but still, lower. His high ground is getting muddy.

2. Obama now has one foot on the “Bomb Iran” bandwagon. He is following McCain’s and Bush’s footsteps in exaggerating Iran’s known military nuclear capabilities. This is very disturbing to me. Not good. One hint about why he might be doing this comes from his attempts to beat McCain to the pro-Israel votes. In an AIPAC speech recently, he threw them some bones, such as classifying Iran as “always” having been a greater threat to Israel than Iraq. Of course, he’s nowhere near the bellicosity of McCain’s AIPAC speeches, but we already knew that McCain is both ideologically hawkish, and also probably pretty confused about the Middle East in general.

3.  Obama used that fake presidential seal for a few minutes. Okay, that’s not such a terrible sin, especially since it was clearly fake (and also perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek, a fact completely lost on Obama-haters). The problem, for me, is that’s the kind of thing Republicans usually do. I guess he’s decided he should emulate their tactics… or something…?

I guess the honeymoon has to end sometime. Obama’s has ended here, for me. He’s still — so far — the candidate I find least distasteful, by a long shot, but he’s a politician. He has demonstrated that, for the votes, he will use at least some of the same stupid tricks the other politicians use.