Howard Dean without the scream

If I hear one more of my reasonably well-educated, allegedly intelligent, intellectually curious, supposedly moderate-to-conservative friends tell me they're leaning towards supporting Barack Obama, I'm going to be sick.

Somehow, glib one-liners about post-partisan change now pass for substantive presidential material, as long as they can be packaged into neat soundbites and carpet-bombed 24/7 from the broadcast auxiliaries of the DNC (CNN, MSNBC, etc). A politician's platform, principles, and character are now not as important as his ability (or lack thereof) to spew thirty-second witticisms. We're living in the brave new world of 'macaca' politics, where YouTube lies in wait for careless politicians, then spreads their gaffes to all corners of the world. So why hasn't Obama yet been subject to the downside of the soundbite age? Why hasn't more been made of his gaffes, just one of which I post for your edification:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwog6E08CFU&feature=related

For all his post-partisan rhetoric about 'change', Obama is an out-and-out liberal. The genuinely non-partisan National Journal examined his voting record and ranked him as the MOST LIBERAL Senator in the entire United States Senate. Not one of the most liberal, not moderately liberal, but THE MOST LIBERAL. Obama stands firmly to the left of such bleeding hearts as Teddy Kennedy, John Kerry, and Harry Reid. He is Howard Dean without the scream. There's not too much post-partisan about that.

To counter the truth about his liberal record, Obama tries in vain to cast off the albatross that is the liberal label. For example, he says that providing health care for everyone is not a liberal idea.

Yes, Senator, it is. Expanding the size of government by having the federal bureaucracy nationalize fully 1/7 of the nation's economy is the zenith of New Deal/Great Society liberalism. It's exactly this sort of nanny-state socialistic centralized control that principled conservatives have been fighting against for years. And let's not forget the wonderful job the federal government has done running its two biggest commitments: Social Security and Medicare. Wanting to place the government that has mismanaged these two programs in charge of our health care system makes as much sense as giving the a bottle of Maker's Mark to an alcoholic. Yet the unreasonable suspension of disbelief necessary to allow that the government unable to manage Social Security and Medicare could some how run health care is an essential tenet of liberal credibility. Just because Barack says national health care is not liberal doesn't make it so.

Thankfully, it seems as though the bloom may finally be off the rose. After a year or more of fawning press coverage, Obama and his allies are finally getting the same kind of scrutiny the media have been giving McCain for years. This Reverend Wright flap is just the tip of the iceberg. With Hillary seeming more like the Incredible Shrinking Candidate day by day, Obama better get used to the heat, because it's not getting any easier.

And maybe there is hope yet. My friends who seemed so uncritically enthralled with the Obama mystique have begun to look at the man behind the myth and they don't like what they see. The junior senator can say anything he likes about being post-partisan. The plain truth is, he is and honest-to-goodness liberal, through and through, and his rock-star act is beginning to wear thin. Sooner or later, his macaca moment will come. And he can rest assured that YouTube will be waiting.