According to the transcript from “This Week with George Stephanopolous” from last week, David Axelrod talked about not drawing lines in the sand in regards to health care reform. When talking about the idea of tax increases for people making less than a quarter of a million dollars, Axelrod backed away from an Obama campaign promise about such increases, a change that should raise concerns about many of President Obama’s other campaign promises. Axelrod stated that President Obama did not want to draw a line in the sand about this debate but the truth remains that Senator Obama had already drawn such a line.
According to the "This Week" transcript, in a discussion about how Obama is planning to pay for health care reform in light of his promises from last year, Axelrod said “Well, you know what? The -- one of the problems we've had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other. And you don't get anything done.” Earlier in the discussion, according to that same transcript, Stephanopolous had played a clip of one of Senator Obama's campaign pledges where candidate Obama said the following: "I can make a firm pledge: Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase, not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. " In the course of less than one year, President Obama has gone from making a firm pledge to having his own adviser going on television and talking about not drawing any lines in the sand. Many conservatives have noted this obvious discrepancy between Senator Obama's words about what he would do as president to President Obama's deeds in the White House. It is understandable that President Obama wants to be open to compromise on important issues such as energy and health care.
However, if a candidate or a president does not want to draw lines in the sand about important issues, he should not be the one drawing such lines on the campaign trail. A firm pledge that Senator Obama made during the campaign may be a line in the sand that President Obama has to confront but he is the one who made that pledge. He is the one who drew the line in the sand that people will remember and look at to see if President Obama has fulfilled all of his campaign promises. He may not want to follow through on lines in the sand but he should not forget that he is the one who drew them.