Obama's virtues aside, it's politics as usual

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spoke at a roundtable discussion at the Flying Star Cafe in Albuquerque. (Alex Brandon/Associated Press)

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's first television spot of the general election campaign is so faithful to the comfy cliches of political bio ads that its appearance seems to be a statement in itself: The candidate who won the Democratic presidential nomination by emphasizing his difference from politics as usual is now calling attention to his sameness.

In the ad, Obama sits in what seems to be a living room, with sun streaming in from a window behind him. If the atmosphere seems familiar, it's because it's a less elaborate version of the setting for Hillary Clinton's announcement video early last year.

"America is a country of strong families and strong values, and my life's been blessed by both," said Obama, explaining that he was raised by his single mother and his grandparents. "We didn't have much money, but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up - love of country, working hard without making excuses, treating your neighbors as you'd like to be treated."

These sentiments have been staples of presidential campaigns since the early 1800s, when candidates began touting their log-cabin roots and simple values. Only the medium has changed.

And it isn't hard to figure out why Obama is sounding these traditional notes. He's been called an elitist, and he wants to remind people that he didn't come from wealth or privilege. "Working hard" is an echo of a similar refrain by Clinton, whose supporters he wants. And "without making excuses" separates him from the racial grievances of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

"I approved this message because I've never forgotten those values," Obama concludes. "And if I have the honor of taking the oath of office as president it will be with a deep and abiding faith in the country I love."

There was a time - just a few weeks ago, in fact - when Obama seemed to be challenging the electorate to look beyond superficial expressions of patriotism. He sometimes declined to wear a flag pin. But that got him tagged as unpatriotic, and now he's sounding the expected notes.

In addition, he vaulted to the top of the Democratic field by alluding frequently to his mixed-race background and international upbringing. He declared that America would look at itself differently when he's president, and the rest of the world would look at America differently. That was a compelling appeal to liberals, but it's not liberals he's after right now, so he's stressing his similarities to other Americans, via the Kansas side of his family.

At the start of the general election campaign, many people believed Obama was so intent on showing his distaste for the usual political tropes - and his superiority to them - that he would go all the way to November with a message of Jimmy Carter-like pieties: hope, change, honesty.

The revelation of the past two weeks is that he's not taking that route. First he came out swinging against John McCain. Then, last week, he broke his promise to accept federal matching funds and adhere to the required spending limits.

The obvious motive is that he's discovered he can vastly outraise McCain - which wasn't clear when he pledged to follow the limits - and doesn't want to squander an advantage.

But he didn't present his decision that way. He said he was opting out of a broken system, stressing that heavy spending by shadowy independent groups had rendered campaign-finance limits meaningless.

This is half-true in the best Bill Clinton tradition: Obama is right that independent groups have corrupted the system, but he's fooling himself if he thinks he's ducking the spending limits to strike a blow for honest, above-board campaigning.

More likely, he's ducking the limits because he wants to win - a fact that seems to be dawning on Democrats (to their delight) and Republicans (to their disgust). David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, last week suggested that the GOP had chosen the wrong caricature of Obama - he's not a Carter-like naif but a Clinton-like manipulator.

That may be true, but it's hard to spin a winning campaign out of pure virtue. McCain, after all, rose to fame as a truth-telling maverick, but then shifted gears to pacify his conservative critics.

He and Obama have maintained their integrity in other respects and still have the British newsmagazine The Economist gushing about how they represent the best of American politics.

But now they're playing to win, and suddenly it's hard to see why so many people expected anything different.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.