The Obama Record on ‘Change’ vs. Non-Change

Mr. Davis is a supporter and fund-raiser for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) — Ed.

The core of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) message in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries is that he stands for change from “politics as usual.”

Here are six facts that most of the media have only barely reported — and that, indisputably, most Iowa and New Hampshire voters were and are unaware of:

1. Sen. Obama’s lobbying ‘reform’ bill — stand-up meals paid for by lobbyists are OK.

At the Manchester, N.H., Saturday night debate, Sen. Obama said he was responsible for passing an historic anti-lobbyist reform bill that prohibited congressmen from having their dinners paid for by lobbyists. But he didn’t seem to know, when ABC’s debate host Charles Gibson pointed it out, that his bill didn’t apply to dinners purchased by lobbyists if the congressmen were standing up — only when they were sitting down.

Yet Sen. Obama features this bill as a major example of “change” in an ad that ran in Iowa many, many times and is now running in New Hampshire. The ad fails to mention that his bill allows lobbyists to pay for a congressman’s stand-up meals, prohibiting only sit-down ones.

Is that real change?

2. Supporting Dick Cheney’s Tax Subsidies-for-Oil Companies Energy Bill

Sen. Obama voted for the bill that contained billions of dollars of tax subsidies for oil companies. Sen. Clinton opposed it. Sen. Obama explains this by pointing to pro-conservation provisions of this bill.  But he could have opposed this bill with the unwarranted tax subsidies and supported a separate bill on conservation and anti-global warming measures.

Is that real change?

3. The war vote

In October 2004, when asked how he would have voted on the October 2002 war resolution, for which he has criticized Sen. Clinton as the core message of his campaign in Iowa, had he been a U.S. senator at the time, Sen. Obama answered:

“I don’t know …”

When asked to explain that answer in March 2007 by The New York Times, his press spokesman, according to the Times story, refused “eight times” to answer the question.

Is that real change?

4. In 2002, Sen. Obama said he favored a “single-payer” government-run healthcare system, as in Canada and the U.K.  In 2007, he has opposed Sen. Clinton’s proposal to mandate a universal healthcare system, leaving — according to liberal Times columnist Paul Krugman — as many as 15 million people uninsured.

Is that real change?

5. Voting Neither Yes nor No

In the Illinois state Senate, Mr. Obama exercised an option available to Illinois state legislators (but not in many other states) to vote “present” rather than “yes” or “no.” He did so on over 130 occasions. He says this was a strategic tactic because he had problems with the bills.

Then why not vote “no”?

Is that real change?

6. The Iranian Resolution

Sen. Obama criticized Sen. Clinton for supporting a non-binding Senate resolution in September2007 declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a “foreign terrorist organization,” a resolution  also supported by Illinois’s senior senator, Dick Durbin (D).

BUT SENATOR OBAMA MISSED THE VOTE — AND CHOSE NOT TO BE RECORDED IN OPPOSITION AS A NEGATIVE “PAIR.”

Further, Sen. Obama fails to mention that in March 2007 he CO-SPONSORED a similar resolution — S. 970 — making exactly the same designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a “foreign terrorist organization.” And when he criticizes Sen. Clinton on the September 2007 resolution, he never once volunteers his co-sponsorship of of the similar March resolution with the identical designation language.

Is that real change?

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These are all facts.

You decide — since most people don’t know any or most of these facts — their significance.