And we thought he was going to be different...

The Daily Doubter is so disappointed:

The AP reports that presidential candidate Barack Obama plans to expand President Bush's Faith Based Initiatives program and will "support some ability to hire and fire based on faith." ...

Obama has stated his intention to review and rescind the actions of George W. Bush that he feels are in violation of the Constitution. Apparently, that intention does not extend to an action of Bush in which Obama feels he can benefit from triangulating Bush's "compassionate conservatism" given that Bush's Faith Baised Initiatives program was created by executive order when it failed to get through Congress and that such a program is nakedly at odds with the 1st amendment of the Constitution.

It is amusing to note the frustration of a lot of Progressives who thought that Obama was actually going to unmake all the hateful things Bush created* as President. They had best get used to disappointment, because Obama is going to keep and expand the majority of what Bush created - Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (FBCI), FISA Courts, DHS, the whole works - just like Hillary would have expanded them and McCain would have expanded them.

What people who call themselves progressives fail to realize is that Bush is a progressive in the historical mold of Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover just like they are. Just like McCain and Hillary and Obama are. They hate Bush not because of the things he does but because the progressive things he does have a more overtly 'conservative' flavor and feature more a overtly Christian facade than is to their liking.

Most of the things Progressives say about Bush's FBCIs are probably true. I say this because I worked a bit with this guy when he was head of Bush's FBCI office and there was enough of a church-state mix that it made even my fundamentalist self a little nervous**. Obama's going to do the same, he'll just work with people more palatable to the left - the Presbyterians more than the Baptists and the urban churches rather than the rural - but the actual differences will be no more meaningful than the difference in the Park Service under Clinton or Bush. Same people, same product.

It's not amazing that Obama should step up and be the next Bush. Hell, it should not even be surprising, though a lot of people will be surprised. That both liberal progressives and Bushite conservatives can reach deals on all the things they do is a testament neither to reasonableness nor to lack of principle; it is proof that conservative is opposite to liberal as German Shepherd is opposite to Labrador Retriever. They may look a little different, they may have different talents, they might even fight on occasion, but they are happy to run together the vast majority of the time.

* that they would think the Constitution should be a guide is laughable. There is no constitutional authority for the government to run these services - or to do 80% of what it does - anyway. That Bush created them by fiat cannot make them any more unconstitutional than they already are.

** Not for the government, but for the church, which is far more important.