Eyes Open, Please.

Already, the mumbling and grumbling have begun. Liberals are discovering that, lo and behold, Barack Obama is—horror of horrors!—a politician.

People have, for months, been crusading for a new kind of politics, and a clear choice against war, and a candidate who will bring us all together, a pure candidate. Now they’re discovering that Senator Obama first, and foremost, wants to win the election.

The liberals made the same miscalculation about Governor Howard Dean, the current Democratic Party Chairman. He, like Obama, believed in a fair and well-run government, but he was also a politician.

I disagree with Alvy Singer, Woody Allen’s character in his masterpiece, “Annie Hall,” who says “Lyndon Johnson’s a politician. That’s one notch underneath child molester.”

There’s no purity in politics. It’s not a field for people who don’t want their food to touch on the plate. In a democratic republic, the American form of government, compromise is called for in the Constitution. That was the whole point of dividing up the power.

Any candidate for the Presidency is committed to formulate policy that will work best for the United States. If that means you pledged “no new taxes,” but now find you have to raise taxes, you do it. Not because you lack character, but because nobody campaigning for the White House can possibly know how our circumstances will change.

If the Illinois senator has shared a detail or two about potential future policies, and those details don’t fit the liberal or independent orthodoxys, that’s no reason to withdraw your support.

The devil is in the details, of course. Which leads me back to my original reservation about Obama. Not that it would ever sway me over to vote for Senator Doubletalk.

My reservation is, Mr. Obama’s enjoys listing all the specific ways that the politicians and the politics of the last thirty years have failed. But he talks about the future in lofty generalities.

While he’s spoken nobly of improving all of our lives, and the character of our country, in general, I know of no one precise policy that Mr. Obama has promised to uphold. Perfect for an era where specifics make you vulnerable.

And just like a politician.