Obama's Convenient Conversion

UPDATE: Rev. Wright steps down from the campaign, Obama "deplores divisive statements". The Swamp. UPDATE: According to FoxNews Special Report, Major Garrett says Wright is still on the spiritual leadership campaign committee, Obama has only distanced himself from his remarks. MSNBC as well: "The Obama campaign says they have no plans to ask the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to step down from a campaign spiritual advisory committee." So the issue still lingers.
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Obama's Convenient Conversion. No, we're not talking religion, we're talking politics. Somehow I can't find this online--Lynn Sweet's Sun Times column is big as life in the print edition of the paper, it has a little dot today by her name signaling a new column today, but their website just directs you to her blog. (Her blog has the list of Obama earmarks.) Her column is scathing. So I'll give it to you, since you apparently can't read it online. [ UPDATE: Note: OK, I found it] It starts this way:

Sen. Barack Obama, who had been declining to reveal earmarks he requested in 2005 and 2006, finally did so Thursday and probably would prefer the story to be about how his campaign challenged Democratic presidential rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to do the same for her entire Senate tenure.

Instead, since I have some reporting history here, I am noting a pattern that has emerged: This is Obama's third conversion of convenience when it comes to major items of ethics and transparency. Obama is making government transparency and ethics a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Evolving to a higher standard is commendable.

Softening a bit at the end there. Obama may rue the day he dissed reporters Lynn Sweet and Carol Marin in San Antonio. More:

The Obama record:
* Obama took 23 subsidized rides on corporate jets in 2005, the first year he was in office. In January 2006, the very week he became the lead Senate Democrat on ethics, his office announced that in future, his political war chest would pay the entire cost of using private planes.
* Obama took donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees for his House and Senate races and his own Hopefund political action committee. He only stopped taking this political money--speaking out against it--when he launched his presidential campaign in February 2007.
* Obama did disclose earmark requests he made in 2007; however, his office has been refusing since June, without explanation, to disclose earmarks Obama had sought previously. Thursday's decision to disclose came on the very day the Senate voted on a one-year earmark moratorium. It failed 71-29.

Obama and Clinton have signed on to this moratorium measure knowing one of them will face the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, who is leading the drive against earmarks and does not request them. Last month, McCain taunted Obama on lack of earmark exposure. Obama will seek no earmarks for Illinois this year.

Obama's presidential campaign hosted a conference call Thursday to trumpet his new disclosures even as they were being posted on the Internet.

Sweet is upset he also has not shared his schedule. More:

Earmarks are tucked into legislation, bypassing review. Obama requested and did not secure a $1 million for a hospital pavilion at the University of Chicago. Obama's wife, Michelle, is vice president for community and external affairs, now on leave, at the U. of Chicago Hospitals. Obama also sought money for the Center for Neighborhood Technology, where his neighbor Jacky Grimshaw is a honcho.

In 2005, Obama asked for $500,000 for Kids Voting USA, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization aimed at getting young people to vote.

In 2006, Obama requested $250,000 for the Chicago Park District's Obesity Prevention Affordable Fitness Centers. He also asked for $8 million for a defense contractor linked to General Dynamics. Obama's Illinois co-finance chairman, Jim Crown, is on the company's board of directors.

The chickens have come home to roost, as they say. Getting some play in the blogosphere. WaPo's The Trail. NY Times story.

UPDATE: Steve Huntley, Sun Times, "Candidate Obama vs. President Obama". Charles Krauthammer, "Adventures in Identity Politics":

The attack line writes itself: Says one thing and means another. So much for the man of new politics. Just an ordinary politician -- like Hillary.

That same maladroit foreign policy adviser is caught calling Hillary a monster. A resignation demand nicely calls attention to the fact that the Obama campaign -- surprise! -- hurls invective. And a strategic mention of Tony Rezko, the Chicago fixer who was once Obama's patron, nicely attaches to Obama a whiff of corruption by association.

These attacks have a cumulative effect. Obama mania is beginning to wear off. Charisma is intrinsically transient. But Hillary's attacks have succeeded in hastening its dissipation.

Krauthammer continues with a discussion of the ugly identity politics that obsess the Democrat party. Obama's identity is still largely unknown to Americans, but is coming under more scrutiny. And Obama's shift in position on a signature issue, outlined above, most recently his extremist minister, and his seamy political base in Chicago all add up.

UPDATE: A closer look at Obama's mom by the NY Times, "A Free-Spirited Wanderer Who Set Obama’s Path":

In the capsule version of the Barack Obama story, his mother is simply the white woman from Kansas. The phrase comes coupled alliteratively to its counterpart, the black father from Kenya. On the campaign trail, he has called her his “single mom.” But neither description begins to capture the unconventional life of Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, the parent who most shaped Mr. Obama.

No question she was a doer who died tragically young. One interesting point for me--his mom was taking Russian in college. Now I know why I took Russian. Somehow I don't think we had a shared philosophy.

UPDATE: Blogtalk Radio at Illinois GOP Network on government reform efforts in Illinois, including exposing pork.