KAUL: Obama now following an erratic course

It looks as though the reason Barack Obama is reluctant to have multiple debates with John McCain is because he’s having too much fun debating himself. (OK, that was a cheap shot; so what? Some days, you pass up the cheap shot, you don’t get any shot at all.)

The thing is, he has so “refined” his positions on a number of issues lately that they resemble political gummy bears, all chewy and sweet.

For example:

• He announced his administration (if any) would support faith-based initiatives by private religious groups, saying that the social problems facing the country are too great and complex to be solved by government action alone. Separation of church and state anyone?

The faith-based initiative, remember, was the lure that George Bush used to get evangelical voters into his boat. Could Mr. Obama be trolling the same waters?

• When the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, knocked down a law that called for the execution of rapists of children, Obama spoke out against the ruling.

Aren’t real liberals supposed to be against the death penalty? Period? Cruel and inhumane punishment, the chance of murdering an innocent person, that sort of thing? Apparently Obama felt that child rape was an issue he had to come out against and he didn’t care how many votes it cost him.

• But when the Supreme Court said that the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns was unconstitutional, Obama agreed with it. He said that while he believes in the government’s right to regulate handguns, he also believes in the right of individuals to own them. He didn’t straddle the issue, he surrounded it.

• He supported a bill establishing electronic surveillance rules for the government’s eavesdropping program, even though it granted immunity to telecommunications companies that conducted warrantless wiretaps in the past.

He said that the bill was no prize, but it was a big improvement on last year’s bill. Besides, there’s a war on.

• And finally, he said he might reassess his timetable for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq after he’d gone there and talked to our military commanders. The granola liberals of the anti-war left squealed loudest at this, hearing in it the echoes of John McCain’s endless-war strategy.

No, he said, he remains committed to ending the war and he reiterated his previously stated position that “we had to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in.”

This might have turned out to be a bigger deal but for the fact that Iraq’s leaders, our allies, are refusing to sign a treaty with the United States unless it contains a firm commitment for the timely withdrawal of American troops. They also indicated that they didn’t want any American bases left behind either.

Excuse me, but doesn’t this put the government of Iraq slightly to the left of Obama on the issue? And way, way to the left of McCain, who talks of keeping troops there forever or 100 years, whichever comes first. (Yeah, I know, he’d only keep them there if they weren’t needed, but still.)

But you know what? None of that so-called flip-flopping matters much to me. I may be less than enthusiastic about some of those positions, but they all seem reasonable to me, something about which we can agree to disagree.

Religious organizations have a history and an expertise in helping people in dire straits and if the government can give them a little boost it’s money well spent.

I’m also against capital punishment but if you’re going to kill anyone, child rapists are a good place to start. The D.C. gun law is a joke, ineffective and unenforceable. Besides, what’s so wrong with a politician changing his mind? John McCain used to be against Bush’s tax cuts, now he’s for them. He’s allowed a second opinion. For the past seven years, we have had a president who never changed his mind about anything.

How’s that working out for you?

Donald Kaul is a syndicated columnist. E-mail him at dkaul2@earthlink.net.