re: #149 Killgore Trout

It’s always hard to tell but Obama isn’t a dumb and dreamy liberal. He’s a smart guy and probably had a pretty realistic idea of what he was getting into. Things don’t always pan out and plans change but I don’t think he was surprised by much after taking office.

Not surprised, but changed perspective when forced to deal with specific real situations under specific constraints, and confronted with information not available to most people. He was a liberal all along, so his campaign can hardly be called pure pandering (although politics without some pandering is impossible). It was consistent with his record.

Mitt’s changes happened because he wants to appeal to the conservative base - or because he was a conservative all along and wanted to pander to the liberal base in MA.