This simply makes no sense, given that the country has already gone through a radical change over the last eight years at the hands of a radical incompetent who has wrecked havoc throughout both our country and the world. “Change” in this context means a rejection of Bush’s radicalism and incompetance, and the re-establishment of sane, prudent, sensible and non-radical modes of political discourse and policy. Bush rejected the idea of coming to a sensible compromise on anything, always pursuing instead a radical agenda of power-grabbing and war-mongering. Obama rejects that, and wishes to govern by a sane and sensible approach that tries to find a middle path that balances the conflicting needs and policies of the country, rejecting radicalism but embracing compromise. WHile Bush rejects reality and tries to impose his own vision onto everything around him, Obama accepts reality and tries to deal with it the best he can. In the current circumstance, that did indeed mean accepting that FISA was the best compromise he, as a sitting senator among 100, could get. It’s certainly not the best compromise he, as a sitting President, would be able to get.

The problem with your analysis of Obama is that it shows the same inflexibility that has plagued so many on the right of late, including Bush. You assume that whatever compromise Obama accepts now shows what he will specifically do as President. You ignore that he does what he thinks is the best he can do under any given circumstance, which means what he actually does will itself change, as his circumstance change. Being President is different than being a senator running for President. What you should notice about your own views is that they are actually nostaligc for a dictator of the type Bush has aspired to be, in that you seem to want an inflexible leader who will try to impose his will on the country. You have a different agenda you want imposed, but the method is the same as Bush’s – a leader who will adopt a radical position of change from the status quo, and who will impose this change by force of will, personality, and uncompromising purity of purpose. That’s Bush with paleocon wings, or Ron Paul with balls. What it is not is conservative, taking into account the reality of the way things are, which you reject with a sneer as “the status quo”. So it makes sense that you reject Obama, who wants to respect the realities of the way things are, and change the specifics of policy sanely and sensibly, to the degree that it can be done at all.

I can understand your love of Ron Paul. I sympathize with some of his views also, but his path has not a prayer of succeeding in the slightest. Obama’s does. Ron Paul is the stary-eyed idealist who thinks the perfect world can be dreamed up in one’s head, and then re-created on earth by osmosis. Politics simply doesn’t work that way. Obama understands politics in a way the Ron Paul never will, and that exceeds even our own grasp of things. He has a genius for organization, it would appear, and seems to be doing pretty well. So yes, he does represent a change from the Bush way of doing things. Bush would never accept a compromise on FISA, but Obama will. Which means he will continue to accept the best deal he can get. Which means the deal itself will change as he can change the circumstances. Which I guess is very frustrating to someone who thinks the way you do. Radical conservatism is so self-contradictory, however, that it will always fail, whether it is Bush’s version or Ron Paul’s or Daniel Larisons. What the conservative movement really needs is its own Obama. Which I suspect is what really peeves you the most about him. You wish that Obama was a policy conservative, or that there was a policy conservative like Obama, and this makes you despise him out of sheer envy. Or maybe that in terms of process, he’s actually way more conservative than you, which really gets your goat. That’s what the Obamacons seem to base their support for him on, that at least he represents a conservative sensibility of accepting reality and working with it, rather than accepting ideals and working from them to change reality into the world they see in their heads.

Ultimately, he IS a politician… ever wonder why the Gingrich-era right ultimately failed to make meaningful change in the way Washington works? I’d suggest it’s because, at their core, they had their eyes set on Washington all along. If, however, a true anti-establishmentarian like Ron Paul were elected, you might see some seismic change. Which is precisely why he was seen (and is still seen) by GOP functionaries as so dangerous.

It should be obvious that Mr. Larison doesn’t think in this way.