Obama: Change Must Be More Than Just a Slogan – Radio Iowa (7/4/07):

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says change must be more than just a campaign slogan.

During a news conference in Pella on Wednesday, Obama repeatedly said voters are “hungry” for a “shift in the political culture” and they want to look forward rather than backward.

“Change just can’t be a slogan. Change has to be something that is demonstrated day to day, on an on-going basis,” Obama told reporters. “I think that my career and my campaign has demonstrated real change.”

Just fucking shoot me. This is the continuation of an extremely irritating habit Obama has been displaying for some time: public quotes lamenting how Democrats must do this, people want that, etc. Obama doesn’t need my permission to be about anything, I wouldn’t vote for him at gunpoint. But this meta talk is absurd. He gets more ink than all the other Democratic candidates combined, how about something concrete? What exactly has his career or his campaign changed? For what issue or issues would he actually go to the mat? What would this “shift in the political culture” look like?

I’ve been asking these questions since long before Obama got in the race in the hopes that I’d eventually get some answers, even if they weren’t meant to appeal to me. And after his campaign and its lofty, but empty, rhetoric took shape, and it became clear that those answers weren’t in the offing, I did what I do from time to time, I practically begged for someone else to make the Obama case. What I’ve gotten so far is a mish-mash of accusations of racism, laundry lists of ineffectual Senate votes, hilarious “he’s experienced enough” / “give him a break, he’s only been in the Senate two years” defenses, and ad hominem attacks based on my support for John Edwards.

Frankly, it’s been pathetic. I even went as far as engaging a blogger who went way out of his way to misunderstand/misrepresent some of our criticisms of Obama, at one point offering up space on 1115 for a careful rebuttal (nullus) of said criticisms. But after accepting the offer, the strange silence has been notable. Usually in this case, I’d mock this blogger for being short on game and shorter on stones, but maybe discretion is really the better part of valor. After all, who can defend a man who makes a point of including passages in his stump speech that accentuate the emptiness of his own philosophy?

All I’m asking for here is a sketch of how Obama’s intent to “move beyond partisan politics,” “shift…the political culture,” and compromise on all the difficult issues of the day will play out in early 21st century America. This isn’t a trick question, and if you consider yourself an Obama supporter, you should already know.