The Obama flip-flops you don't know

by Alex Conant

Since winning the election, President Barack Obama has famously flip-flopped on many of the major issues that he championed on the campaign trail. But did you know he’s also flip-flopped on a myriad of less publicized issues? This much everybody knows: Even before taking office, Obama broke his promise to not appoint lobbyists to his administration. Since then, he’s abandoned his promises to pay for every dollar of new government spending and bring home all combat troops from Iraq within 18 months. And in recent days, he’s outraged his political base by reversing his earlier commitments to eliminate military tribunals and release photos depicting prisoner abuse. All those well-publicized reversals have overshadowed the administration’s flip-flops on a host of additional positions. Here are just some of the biggest flip-flops that you may not have noticed: Osama bin Laden: During the presidential debates last year, Obama declared that capturing or killing Osama bin Laden “has to be our biggest national security priority.” In his first TV interview after winning the election, he said the terrorist leader was “not just a symbol. He’s also the operational leader of an organization that is planning attacks against U.S. targets,” and that the additional troops being sent to Afghanistan would hunt him down because “capturing or killing bin Laden is a critical aspect of stamping out Al Qaeda.”

Bin Laden’s significance to Obama dissipated during the transition. By the time Obama gave another interview in early January, he said killing or capturing bin Laden was not necessary to “meet our goal of protecting America.” A few months later, when he announced his Afghanistan troop surge, he made no reference to the hunt for bin Laden. On human space exploration: Early in his presidential campaign, Obama had great reservations about the costs and risks of human space flight. He said he would delay NASA’s plans to send humans to the moon and, eventually, Mars and, instead, spend that money on education. But, as Florida, Ohio and Texas became more politically important, Obama began to walk back his proposed NASA cuts, promising to fund unmanned space exploration and some other scientific missions. Now that he’s in office, Obama’s reversal is complete: The White House budget, released earlier this month, provides a healthy increase in NASA funding and explicitly endorses the “goal of returning Americans to the moon and exploring other destinations.” On the Armenian genocide: In the U.S. Senate and on the campaign trail, Obama firmly declared that the death of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I was “genocide” — a touchy topic between Turks and Armenians and a political priority for Armenian-Americans — and promised that “as president, I will recognize the Armenian genocide.”

Nonetheless, during his recent trip to Turkey as president, Obama broke his promise. Instead, he tried to muddy the waters, announcing that “my views are on the record and I have not changed views” but refusing to state what those views actually are. On business tax cuts: Even though he unapologetically promised to raise taxes on entrepreneurs (and everybody else) making more than $250,000 per year, Obama offered small businesses some solace by promising several specific tax cuts. One, which became a cornerstone of his campaign’s jobs plan, would eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses. Another, which he proposed as the economy crashed in the waning days of the campaign, would offer businesses a $3,000 tax credit for every employee they hired. The economy has not improved since Obama’s election, but he nevertheless shelved both proposals: His budget puts off the capital gains tax cut until after his term in office ends and makes no mention of his new-job tax credit. These four examples only scratch the surface of Obama’s reversals since taking office. Other flip-flops include everything from federally funding needle-exchange programs (which he supported in the campaign but his budget does not), allowing five days of public review before bill signings (he broke the promise with his first bill signing) and ordering the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, recently told POLITICO that “Obama’s governing is completely consistent with the way he campaigned.” A cursory comparison between his campaign promises and administration policies shows that’s not true. Alex Conant is a communications consultant who served as the Republican National Committee’s national press secretary during the 2008 presidential campaign. Previously, he was a spokesman at the White House and in the U.S. Senate.