KEY POINTS:
During the Democratic primary season, all those eons ago, Barack Obama deployed no more powerful line against Hillary Clinton than his insistence "we can't just tell people what they want to hear. We need to tell them what they need to hear".
More than just a catchy couplet,
the phrase was a deadly arrow into the heart of Clintonism.
Few things crippled Hillary's campaign like the belief she would say or do anything to get elected, from supporting the Iraq War to claiming she'd dodged sniper fire at Tuzla.
In Obama, Democrats seemed to have found something refreshing: a brave truth-teller who had spoken out against the war and could at last restore integrity and honesty to Washington politics.
But since Obama dispatched Clinton, he has seemed rather more attuned to what the people want to hear or perhaps he has simply traded the wants of a liberal audience for those of a more moderate one. Either way, he is treading that reliably time-worn path every nominee follows to the political centre.
And the question for Democrats is whether to applaud Obama as a cunning politician who knows how to win or fret that he's given undecided voters reason to think his "politics of hope" are just politics as usual.
Last week, Obama expressed surprising disagreement with a Supreme Court ruling outlawing the death penalty for child rapists. To some, even the contents of Obama's iPod smacked of political calculation, combining as it did Baby Boomer classics with highbrow jazz, mindless top 40 pop and edgy-but-not-too-edgy hip hop.
In truth, Obama has been creeping towards the sanitised centre for a while.
After disdaining American flag lapel pins last year, he now wears one regularly. When Jeremiah Wright, his controversial former pastor, provoked outrage in March, Obama insisted he could not "disown" him, but did so later with a public condemnation.
Obama now concedes that his sharp criticism of free trade agreements such as Nafta before industrial-area primary voters might have been "overheated".
He has toughened his talk on Iran and in favour of Israel. He has even shaded his rhetoric on Iraq, downplaying his primary season vow to withdraw all US combat troops within 16 months for more careful talk of a gradual and "responsible" exit.
Each of these positions has been generally consistent with the prevailing views of the swing voters Obama will need to win in November: independents, liberal Republicans and moderate Democrats whose votes are still up for grabs.
Obama has already locked down most core Democrats, who wouldn't think of staying home or voting for the pro-war McCain. But according to an early June Gallup poll, McCain is beating Obama among independents who don't lean towards either party.
McCain campaign operatives have welcomed these interesting new dimensions of Obama's profile. Their core argument, after all, is that Obama is a typical pol who has never taken real risks (unlike McCain, who defied his party on campaign finance reform in the late 1990s and recent public opinion over the Iraq War).
Obama, they say, is just another unprincipled flip-flopper: "John Kerry with a tan," as prominent conservative activist Grover Norquist recently put it. Never mind that McCain himself has revamped core positions.
Savvy Democrats understand that there was always a certain genius to Obama's positioning, that to some degree his talk of changing politics was itself a skilful pose which turned Clinton into a reactionary foil. They will appreciate his awareness for what it takes to get elected. Democrats have long believed that their side practises politics less skilfully, less ruthlessly, than the Republicans.
For now, they will have to hope that Obama hasn't gone too far. An ever-confounding question of politics is to know at what point a shift to a more majority position is outweighed by the disillusionment and scorn of flip-flopping.
Wherever that tipping point is, Obama hasn't yet reached it. He is still better off with his current stances than he would be, say, explaining why he doesn't believe that child rapists deserve to die.
It's an unfortunate reality of politics that voters don't want to hear what they need to hear. We want to hear what we want to hear. Obama's recognition of that is a testament that he is, for better or worse, a shrewd, if far from pure, politician.
THE OBAMA SHUFFLE
* Disagreed with Supreme Court ruling that death penalty unconstitutional in cases of child rape, saying it should be allowable in "narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances". Obama has supported the death penalty in Illinois.
* Agreed with Supreme Court's removal of Washington's ban on handgun, a law he had said was constitutional.
* Hired centrist economist Jason Furman.
* Spoke on the responsibility of fathers.
* After the House of Representatives passed a bill on eavesdropping, Obama said he would vote for it even though he had been against previous compromises on domestic spying.
* Refused public funding to keep his advantage over McCain. His big war chest allows him to campaign in traditionally Republican states.
* He has worn a flag pin and made patriotic statements at rallies since being attacked for being 'unpatriotic'.
The reasoning
Obama's policies are left wing on tax and spending issues. He has some more-centrist policies - his health policy was not as all-encompassing as Clinton's and he says nuclear power has to be considered among America's energy options. But having played to the more liberal Democratic audience to be elected the nominee, he is trying to present a more moderate face to the general electorate. He wants to draw moderate and independent voters. He is trying not to be easily categorised and to weave away from the liberal ropes the slow-footed John Kerry was plastered against. He's keen to win over the white, working class voters who were hostile towards him during the primaries. He has picked certain issues - the petrol tax holiday, offshore drilling - as his party line in the sand while being more pragmatic and flexible about others.
- OBSERVER
Michael Crowley is senior editor at New Republic magazine and the Observer's chief American commentator.
