Meet Mr. ATW

Barack is not the man from Hope any more. He's abandoning his angelic, liberal stances and has morphed into ATW - Anything to Win. The difficulty of doing this standard general election reposistioning when you're the guy who is going to be different is outlined in Time Magazine.

To some observers, Obama's transformation from upstart candidate to presumptive nominee has made him begin to look dangerously like the typical Washington politicians he so often rails against. Worried about his patriotism? He now wears a flag pin daily. Worried about his church? He left it. Think he's inexperienced? Don't fret; he's got lots of renowned advisers. Too liberal? Well, just look at his recent policy statements on defending Israel and protecting warrantless wiretapping.

It may be my imagination, but there seems to be a darker mood to Barack these days. He comes across as less warm, less innocent, less likable.

in some ways Obama has boxed himself in: in trying to counter criticisms about his experience, he's brought in a team full of gray-haired advisers who, by dint of their long-established positions and Washington relationships, represent the furthest thing from change.

Perhaps he feels ugly, giving in to his lust for power the way he has.

As he tries to maintain the fervent grass-roots enthusiasm that has gotten him this far while appealing to enough independents to take him to the White House, the Illinois Senator must both disprove and prove the old adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

That will be hard, for sure.

The liberal blogosphere lit up angrily when Obama signed on to a controversial Senate compromise to authorize President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping programs last week. Earlier this month, Obama conceded that his own rhetoric on trade during the primaries was "overheated and amplified" and that he supports "opening up a dialogue" with trading partners Canada and Mexico on "how we can make this work for all people," as he told Fortune. And in his first speech after cementing the nomination, Obama assured the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a prominent Jewish group, that he would like to see Jerusalem "remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," a surprisingly hawkish declaration that outraged the Arab world and Arab-Americans and appeared to contradict earlier statements he had made.

Barack has so effectively built his brand as the remedy to a self-serving, unprincipled government in DC, that it has to diminish his magic to behave as maliciously as he has of late.