The New York Times calls it “a Pragmatist’s Shift Toward the Center … Barack Obama has taken a stroll this week away from traditional liberal political positions, his path toward the political center marked by artful leaps and turns.”

Literary talent can turn ‘flip flopping’ becomes “artful leaps and turns”. The article goes on:

Mr. Obama has executed several policy pirouettes in recent weeks, each time landing more toward the center of the political ring. On Wednesday in Chicago, he confirmed that he would not fight a revised law that would extend retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the government spy on American citizens. (He had previously spoken against immunity provisions in an earlier version of the bill.) And recently he backed away from his own earlier support for campaign finance spending limits in the 2008 election.

Mr. Obama describes his new turns as consistent with long-held beliefs. On Wednesday he painted his decision to opt out of the campaign finance system as a reformist gesture, noting that most of his donors are not wealthy. “Our donor base is the American people,” he said, adding that this was the thematic goal of campaign finance reform.

Back on the old site I remarked in comments that while Obama had a certain kind of talent, he wasn’t the sort of person you would ever want to admit into a clandestine cell or share a foxhole with. Imagine being in Bataan with a guy who could suddenly turn Japanese. I wonder if even the Japanese would have wanted him. But somehow I think the NYT writer is uneasy about this too. His closing paragraph borders perilously on satire and irony.

Mr. Obama is an introspective candidate, and perhaps the best analyst of his own political style. “I serve as a blank screen,” he wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” “on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon
You come and go
You come and go
Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dream
Red, gold and green
Red, gold and green

I’m a man without conviction
I’m a man who doesnt know
How to sell a contradication
You come and go
You come and go