Obama is trapped

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer nails it.

In last week’s column, I thought I had thoroughly chronicled Obama’s brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles — on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecom immunity for post-Sept. 11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started.

Yesterday, Obama had two news conferences. The first was to discuss “nuances” in his Iraq policy.

Mr. Obama said at his first news conference on Thursday that he planned a “thorough assessment” of his Iraq policy when he visited that country this summer.

“I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability,” he said. “That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”

The second, called “an emergency news conference” by Charlie Gibson of ABC News, was to beat back the waves of rage from his defeatist left wing base.

[T]he Obama campaign scheduled a second news conference to try to clarify his remarks. “We’re going to try this again,” Mr. Obama said. “Apparently, I wasn’t clear enough this morning on my position with respect to the war in Iraq.”

He has no room to maneuver, at least before the election. The Democratic Part left wing, the people who gave Obama the nomination, are, in Churchill’s famous words, “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity.”

The discomfort with all this is obvious in left wing blogs like Kevin Drum’s. The comments show how furiously they are spinning the Obama drifting and flopping about on policy.

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