Jennifer is quite right in her analysis of Barack Obama’s assertion that he is not, in the words of the New York Times, “pirouetting, leaping, lurching even, toward the political center.”

Senator Obama is clearly nervous that his transparent political shifts during the last few weeks is hurting him, and with good reason. Obama has not only not shown himself to be a practitioner of a new and more uplifting brand of politics; he is actually the embodiment of what he said he stands against (the “old” politics of poll-driven candidates who tell the American people what they want to hear instead of telling them what they need to hear).

Obama’s explanation for his head-snapping changes is a typical mix of both prickliness and arrogance. “Look, let me talk about the broader issue, this whole notion that I am shifting to the center,” he said. “The people who say this apparently haven’t been listening to me.”

It appears as though Professor Obama’s students [read: most of America] need to be wrapped on the knuckles for failing to listen carefully to the complicated and endlessly nuanced worldview of the Great Man himself. What appear to mere mortals as one convenient and unprincipled lurch to the center after another turns out to be, when viewed from Obamian heights, a model of stunning consistency.

In truth, many of us have been listening for the entire campaign, which is why those on both the left and the right are commenting of Obama’s chameleon-like qualities.

In his comments in Georgia yesterday, Obama went on to say, “One of the things you find as you go through this campaign, everyone becomes so cynical about politics.” There is, he added, an “assumption that you must be doing everything for political reasons.”

In fact, not everyone is cynical about politics and not every office holder acts for only self-interested political reasons. It just happens that the Democratic candidate for President this year does. And if Obama wins the presidency, there will be an unmistakable irony that will emerge. Having raised hopes among his supporters so high so early, and in portraying himself as a rare, and even uniquely principled, public figure, Obama will be unmasked for what he is: a very talented, highly ambitious politician who emerged from the Chicago school of politics. And Obama, a man who promised to be the antidote for cynicism, will merely deepen it.