President Barack Obama has changed his tune on a number of important issues since he went from being an Illinois senator to being our country's leader.
Nowhere has that been more evident in recent months than in his views on the so-called "debt limit" and his decision to involve U.S. military forces in attacks on the North African nation of Libya.
• Five years ago, when Congress was considering an increase in the debt limit - and when our national debt was far smaller than it is today - then-Sen. Barack Obama staunchly opposed the increase. Here is what he had to say, according to the Congressional Record of March 16, 2006:
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies. ... Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit."
Of course, exactly the same things can be said of today's attempt to increase the debt limit - yet Obama is all for it!
• On the subject of when a president may engage in acts of war without the authorization of Congress, here is what then-Sen. Obama said in 2007, according to The Boston Globe: "The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
And yet now Obama has added U.S. forces to the aerial bombardment of Libya in the midst of that country's civil war - without congressional authorization. He has relied instead on the "authorization" provided by a U.N. resolution.
Bizarrely, Obama says the U.S. role in the attacks doesn't require permission from Congress because the attacks don't amount to "hostilities." But obviously, the repeated bombardments of a country are "hostilities" by any normal definition of that word.
And while Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi's departure from power would certainly be welcome, he does not today represent "an actual or imminent threat" to the United States.
Neither raising our nation's non-limiting "debt limit" nor involving our military in the internal conflict in Libya is wise.
It is regrettable that both of those positions now have the support of the president.