The New York Times and the Washington Post are both sorely disappointed by Obama’s campaign finance flip-flopping. 

In what I consider to be the column of the day (they have to be witty, funny, interesting, entertaining, informative and, well, accurate) David Brooks describes Obama as the ‘most split-personality politician in the country today.’

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they’re running against some academic liberal who wouldn’t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn’t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they’re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson.

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

But he’s been giving us an education, for anybody who cares to pay attention. Just try to imagine Mister Rogers playing the agent Ari in “Entourage” and it all falls into place.

He then goes on to explain why people should not be surprised by this ‘revelation’ (Obama’s split personality). Obama, of course, has quite a record of both throwing people under the buss and he has proven to be highly opportunistic. Tell the people what they want to hear, not what they need to hear, has always been part of Obama’s approach to politics.

Some recent examples:

Dr. Barack could have changed the way presidential campaigning works. John McCain offered to have a series of extended town-hall meetings around the country. But favored candidates don’t go in for unscripted free-range conversations. Fast Eddie Obama threw the new-politics mantra under the truck.

And then on Thursday, Fast Eddie Obama had his finest hour. Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He’s spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system.

But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama’s got more money now.

And that’s exactly it. It’s opportunistic, and from a political perspective Obama’s choice makes sense. After all, he’s able to raise so much money that he public funding would limit his options considerably.

However, when he did not have money, he pretended that public financing was a matter of principles. We now see that he either lied, or that he is more than willing to throw principles under ‘the truck’ when said principles are inconvenient.

And then, the ultimate – in my opinion – description of Obama:

I have to admit, I’m ambivalent watching all this. On the one hand, Obama did sell out the primary cause of his professional life, all for a tiny political advantage. If he’ll sell that out, what won’t he sell out? On the other hand, global affairs ain’t beanbag. If we’re going to have a president who is going to go toe to toe with the likes of Vladimir Putin, maybe it is better that he should have a ruthlessly opportunist Fast Eddie Obama lurking inside.

All I know for sure is that this guy is no liberal goo-goo. Republicans keep calling him naïve. But naïve is the last word I’d use to describe Barack Obama. He’s the most effectively political creature we’ve seen in decades. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t smart enough to succeed in politics by pretending to renounce politics.

Exactly.

What’s interesting about all this is, is that the above criticism too was main inspired by Obama’s decision not to accept public funding. It seems that Brooks is not the only one who has responded negatively, even angrily to Obama’s flip-flop. Here’s a ‘normal’ article in the liberal newspaper the New York Times (which has also been quite supportive of Obama in recent weeks and even months):

 But now, with the decision by Senator Barack Obama to become the first presidential candidate to forgo public money, the system is facing the most critical threat to its survival.

At various times in its three-decade life, the public financing system has been declared close to its demise. Yet, every four years, it has continued to survive, with all presidential candidates since the system began in 1976 accepting public money to run their general election campaigns — and the spending limitations that come with it…

But Mr. Obama’s decision to opt out of public financing — along with the ability of the Internet to let candidates raise large sums of money from small donors — may do more to shatter the system than all of the loopholes it has spawned.

Of course the newspaper than makes a tremendous flip-flop itself, arguing that Obama’s success is mostly possible because of small donations. Although this is true to a degree, it is also most certainly true that big donors and big companies also invest heavily in him. These aren’t just single mothers donating a few dollars every month.

What’s also important is that the campaign finance reform debate is not just about business money. It’s about the influence of money, basta. True reformers believe that money has become too important. Elections, it seems, can be bought. If Obama goes ahead – and he will – and if McCain will be the last to take public money – and he most likely will as well – elections will be even more about money than they currently are.

The Fact Checker, meanwhile, looks at Obama flip-flops in an attempt to determine whether Obama has truly flip-flopped and lied or not. The conclusion:

 Barack Obama probably wishes that he had been more careful in the wording of some of his earlier statements about the public financing system. His carefully parsed retreat on public financing is similar to his hedging on an earlier promise to meet the leaders of Iran, Cuba, and North Korea “without preconditions” during his first year as president. In this case, however, the turnaround is even more blatant.

In what’s, again, a clear sign that Obama has disappointed many people (quite strange in my opinion since everyone should have known already that he is an opportunist, hypocrite, liar and divider not uniter), a NYT editorial says:

 The excitement underpinning Senator Barack Obama’s campaign rests considerably on his evocative vows to depart from self-interested politics. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama has come up short of that standard with his decision to reject public spending limitations and opt instead for unlimited private financing in the general election.

Oops.

Conclusion: by choosing to throw principles under the buss, Obama seems to have disappointed quite some journalists and newspapers who are normally very supportive of him. One wonders how this will play out in the coming months.