Just who is Sen. Barack Obama?

A few weeks back Sen. Barack Obama was telling us Rev. Jeremiah Wright's racist and anti-American screeds were just "snippets" of the sort one often hears in "the black church." Of course, he himself had never heard them or anything about them.

But he did allow that from what he was just then learning about the remarks of his close friend and pastor of 20 or so years, Obama found Wright's remarks a lot like those of his still living white grandmother.

Obama let us know he didn't approve of what Wright or his grandmother said. But he wouldn't turn his back on either of them.

But he didn't want us dwelling upon any of that: it was time to move on to a national conversation o race.

Then last Friday he did a 180 and said if he'd ever heard any of Wright's screeds over the years he would have left his church then and there.

Now today at Politico under Kenneth Vogel's byline we read more about changes in Obama's positions. First some excerpts with my comments following below the star line.

Vogel begins:

During his first run for elected office, Barack Obama played a greater role than his aides now acknowledge in crafting liberal stands on gun control, the death penalty and abortion — positions that appear at odds with the more moderate image he has projected during his presidential campaign.

The evidence comes from an amended version of an Illinois voter group’s detailed questionnaire, filed under his name during his 1996 bid for a state Senate seat.

Late last year, in response to a Politico story about Obama’s answers to the original questionnaire, his aides said he “never saw or approved” the questionnaire.

They asserted the responses were filled out by a campaign aide who “unintentionally mischaracterize[d] his position.”

But a Politico examination determined that Obama was actually interviewed about the issues on the questionnaire by the liberal Chicago nonprofit group that issued it. And it found that Obama — the day after sitting for the interview — filed an amended version of the questionnaire, which appears to contain Obama’s own handwritten notes added to one answer.

The two questionnaires, provided to Politico with assistance from political sources opposed to Obama’s presidential campaign, were later supplied directly by the group, Independent Voters of Illinois — Independent Precinct Organization. Obama and his then-campaign manager, who Obama’s campaign asserts filled out the questionnaires, were familiar with the group, its members and its positions, since both were active in it before Obama's 1996 state Senate run.

Through an aide, Obama, who won the group’s endorsement as well as the statehouse seat, did not dispute that the handwriting was his. But he contended it doesn’t prove he completed, approved — or even read — the latter questionnaire.

“Sen. Obama didn’t fill out these state Senate questionnaires — a staffer did — and there are several answers that didn't reflect his views then or now,” Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama’s campaign, said in an e-mailed statement. “He may have jotted some notes on the front page of the questionnaire at the meeting, but that doesn't change the fact that some answers didn't reflect his views. His 11 years in public office do.”

But the questionnaires provide fodder to question Obama’s ideological consistency and electability. Those questions are central to efforts by Obama’s presidential rival Hillary Clinton to woo the superdelegates whose votes represent her best chance to wrest the Democratic nomination from Obama. ....

The entire Politico article is here

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Comments:

There's a great deal more to the Politico article. All of it's interesting for what it tells us about Obama and also for "the look" it provides into how political interests groups work.

I feel I know who Sen. Hillary Clinton is, but I keep asking myself: Just who is Sen. Barack Obama