Is Obama back on track?

It seems that Barack Obama has moved up a gear overtaking Hilary Clinton in Iowa. Iowa is the first to vote in the Democratic nominations so has importance to the campaign.
Obama has attacked Clinton on a wide range of issues relating to both domestic and foreign policy and accused her for “thinking like a Republican”. In particular her record of supporting the invasion of Iraq is still an issue.
The problem of one party thinking like another is not peculiar to the U.S. with New Labour attempting to forge ahead with Tory policies on education and crime and punishment. As Ian Johnson, my SLP comrade, pointed out “they’re all driving the same bus”. That’s true of Obama too. His politics are recognisable as more of the same in a number of statements he has made. His views on the “war on terror” are not notably different even if he didn’t back Iraq. He has made comments on Pakistan, for example, where he peddled the same basic thinking.


All candidates as far as I can see accept basic premises that have been laid out by the Bush administration. Not that it’s different from earlier thinking that the bogey man is real and a threat to the nation. After the “communist threat” went away something had to be invented which Al Quaeda helpfully provided. Obama accepts the fiction created under Bush’s regime and the subsequent “war on terror” just as Thatcherism was embraced by New Labour. Embraced and intensified.
America needs a new bus just as we do in the UK, not just a new driver.

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