The Note: Sweet Migration

June 27, 2008 -- It's not about guns -- it's about ammunition.

Thursday's landmark Supreme Court may or may not have plopped gun control into the campaign. But it does place Sen. Barack Obama's careful, cautious, sometimes contradictory (and dare we say Clintonian?) approach to tricky policy positions squarely in the center of the race.

An appropriate day for Obama to wrap himself in the Clinton legacy: As Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton seek unity in Unity, N.H., the emerging portrait of Obama, D-Ill., is of a politician who is racing for the centrist approach, and choosing his words mighty carefully.

Name your issue -- on trade, taxes, guns, the death penalty, campaign finance reform, FISA -- Obama may well be taking the politically smart position for a Democrat in these early days of the general election.

But the point is that he's taking positions that are at least shaded differently than those he's taken in the past, if not outright flip-flops. These are political calculations that make a dangerous assumption for Obama: that he's willing to risk being called a "politician" at all.

"From the beginning, Barack Obama's special appeal was his vow to remain an idealistic outsider, courageous and optimistic, and never to shift his positions for political expediency, or become captive of the Inside-the-Beltway intelligentsia, or kiss up to special interests and big money donors," writes McClatchy's Margaret Talev. "In recent weeks, though, Obama has done all those things."

The post-primary migration is looking like a sprint: "In the last week, Mr. Obama has taken calibrated positions on issues that include electronic surveillance, campaign finance and the death penalty for child rapists, suggesting a presidential candidate in hot pursuit of what Bill Clinton once lovingly described as 'the vital center,' Michael Powell writes in The New York Times. "Mr. Obama has executed several policy pirouettes in recent weeks, each time landing more toward the center of the political ring."

"His reactions to this week's controversial court decisions showed yet again how he is carefully moving to the center ahead of the fall campaign," Massimo Calabresi writes for Time. "Politicians are always happy to get a chance to accuse opponents of flip-flopping, but McCain's team may be more afraid of Obama's shift to the center than their words betray."

This is audacity of a different variety: "Since securing the Democratic presidential nomination, when confronted with a series of thorny issues the Illinois senator has pursued a conspicuously conventional path, one that falls far short of his soaring rhetoric," Kenneth P. Vogel writes for Politico.

"Obama passed up opportunities to take bold stands and make striking departures from customary politics. Instead, he has followed a familiar tack, straddling controversial issues and choosing politically advantageous routes that will ensure his campaign a cash edge and minimize damaging blowback on several highly sensitive issues."

The arrogance tag -- from the seal flap to the reversals and the non-committal responses -- is set to be applied by the RNC. "We're going to argue that there's been significant damage done to Obama's brand this week," one GOP operative tells The Note on Friday.

"The truth about Obama is uncomplicated. He is just a politician (though of unusual skill and ambition)," columnist Charles Krauthammer writes. "When it's time to throw campaign finance reform, telecom accountability, NAFTA renegotiation or Jeremiah Wright overboard, Obama is not sentimental. He does not hesitate. He tosses lustily."

And another poll has it tight: Obama 43, McCain 38 in the new Time survey -- making Newsweek and Bloomberg/LA Times look like outliers, and making this race look close indeed.

On the gun case, Obama "is attempting to find safe political ground on an explosive issue for Democrats,"per ABC News. He "avoided taking a firm position on the gun-control measure tossed out by the Supreme Court, despite previous indications that he supported Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban."

"Obama may as well have strapped on his John Wayne chaps and holster yesterday to announce his support of the Supreme Court's decision that the Second Amendment guaranteeing gun rights actually means what it says," Charles Hurt writes in the New York Post. "Are the Democrats now the party of states' rights, gun rights and the death penalty?"

Obama's mayor and staunch supporter, Richard Daley, called the ruling "frightening," per the Chicago Tribune.

Obama, meanwhile, hasn't really said where he stands on either the D.C. gun ban or Chicago's.

"Does Barack Obama believe that the D.C. handgun ban was constitutional or unconstitutional? We can't tell, and Barack Obama won't say," says McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, per the Tribune's Mike Dorning.

(Anyone else having flashbacks of Hillary Clinton's non-answering questions about driver's licenses?)

Team McCain won't let this one slip by: "It's one in a long series of reversals of positions . . . whether it be on his pledge on public financing or his position on the Second Amendment," McCain, R-Ariz., said Thursday, per ABC's Bret Hovell and James Gerber. "So it's not surprising."

It may even be welcome: "If Obama's brand of authenticity is taking a bashing, his equivocation and hedging on this issue won't help much," Commentary's Jennifer Rubin writes.

It fits the emerging (de facto?) GOP strategy. "[The] McCain's campaign has apparently settled on a highly personal campaign theme that aims to differentiate McCain and Obama on both character and issues," Politico's Jonathan Martin reports. "The strategy: Paint Obama as conventional politician who always takes the safe and easy political road, then amplify the distinction by framing McCain as a patriot, somebody who has put sacrifice above self."

A new (rotting) piece of Obama's legacy? "The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can't afford to live anywhere else. But it's not safe to live here," Binyamin Appelbaum writes in The Boston Globe.

"A Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district -- deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable," Appelbaum continues.

The names connected to Grove Parc: Valerie Jarrett, Allison Davis, and yes, Tony Rezko. "Rezko's company used subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,000 apartments, mostly in and around Obama's district, then refused to manage the units, leaving the buildings to decay to the point where many no longer were habitable."

And could there be one more policy move? "A health adviser to the presumptive Democratic nominee is signaling that Obama's plan could eventually go in Clinton's direction," per ABC's Teddy Davis, John Santucci, and Gregory Wallace. Regarding the individual mandate that's not part of his healthcare plan: "He has not said he is opposed to it," said Obama adviser Dr. Kavita Patel.