Call it the Potomac shuffle, the traditional election-year dance in which a candidate who has earlier moved left or right to win over the party faithful in a primary campaign promptly slides back to the centre to appeal to the rest of the country. Barack Obama, quite a mover on the dancefloor, has spent the month since he beat Hillary Clinton to the Democratic nomination giving a demonstration of this time-honoured piece of Washington choreography - and at an unusually high tempo, too.
Just yesterday he announced, in a speech on religion aimed at wooing evangelicals - who Democrats believe are no longer a guaranteed bloc for the Republicans - that he would continue George Bush's support for "faith-based initiatives", channelling public money to religious groups to perform social services, whether drug rehab or care for the poor. (Side note: watch for David Cameron, who also favours this approach, to claim he is Obama's spiritual brother.)
Most of the piece is spot on, though near the end the author includes the suggestion that the ruthless pursuit of political victory is so rare in a Democrat that it takes acclimation. Was he in a coma during the Clinton years? Was FDR censored from history books and nobody told me?
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