He became the first presidential nominee since Richard Nixon in 1972 to state that his campaign will be funded totally by private donations with no limits on spending.

It was a flip-flop of epic proportions. It was one that he could not rationalize or justify. His video was unconvincing. He looked like someone who was being kept as a hostage somewhere he was so absolutely unconvincing in it. It could not have passed a polygraph test.

I mean, coming up with this bogus argument the Republicans have so much more money - the Republicans don't have so much more money. He's raised three times as much as John McCain has.

He has every possible committee, except Republican National Committee, Democrats at the Senate level, congressional level have this lopsided edge over Republicans. They spent three times as much, did Democratic leaning 527s, in the last election as did Republicans.

So what Obama didn't admit was, up until February of this year, when he told Tim Russert that not only would he aggressively seek an agreement on public financing, that he personally would sit down with John McCain and work it out, then, all of a sudden, they realized that all these small contributions were coming in and he was going to have a financial advantage in the fall against the Republican, and they grabbed it.

He treated it as if some noble decision to finalize democracy. It was ludicrous.

I do think it's the low point of the Obama candidacy, and I think it for this reason. His entire career he has put political reform at the center of it. In the Illinois legislature, in the Senate, political reform has been the essence of who he has been. And so for him to betray this, to sell out this issue, what won't he sell out?

And it really reveals something about his conscience. It reveals that he has this idealistic side, which is a serious policy side, but he also has a tough Machiavellian side, a political hack side, and he wants to win.

And so, in some ways, this is terrible because it's epic hypocrisy. In some ways, if you want a tough SOB to be your president, he's shown he is a tough S.O.B.

John McCain is no plaster saint on this issue. McCain opted into public financing to get a bank loan, private bank loan for his campaign during the primaries, and then, as soon as money started to come in, he pulled out of public financing.

But McCain wouldn't have done this. When the chips are down and McCain faced the crucial issue of his career, which was backing the surge, he backed the surge thinking it would cost him the presidency.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Troops in Iraq.

DAVID BROOKS: On a core issue of character, I do not believe McCain will bend. He'll bend on all this other stuff he doesn't care about, but Obama did bend on a core issue of his conscience. (my emphasis)

You tell me what the core issues of character, what they bend on. I mean, John has been quite flexible. And I do think John McCain has got a lot more political capital fighting for campaign finance reform than the Democrats have, because their constituency is far more disposed to it than is John McCain's.

On FISA, I think it's quite a good compromise. I don't think -- if you're a phone company executive, the government comes to you and asks you to do stuff, I think you should be protected. And then there are these series of gestures.

So I think, actually, it was pretty good week for Congress.

Well, I think Barack Obama, if he hasn't already - I was told today - is going to endorse what passed the House. So I think that will probably solidify Democrats and encourage Senate Democrats. Maybe it will discourage Republicans from supporting the FISA.

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside. (my emphasis)

And Fast Eddie Obama didn’t just sell out the primary cause of his life. He did it with style. He did it with a video so risibly insincere that somewhere down in the shadow world, Lee Atwater is gaping and applauding. Obama blamed the (so far marginal) Republican 527s. He claimed that private donations are really public financing. He made a cut-throat political calculation seem like Mother Teresa's final steps to sainthood. (my emphasis)

SEN. BIDEN: Look, I've been a strong supporter of public financing my, my whole career. I'm the first guy to introduce a public financing bill to the United States Senate in 1973. And the purpose was to get big money out of the politics. The irony is, although he has changed his position - I'm not going to color that, he's changed his position - the fact of the matter is he has 1,400,000 contributors, the vast majority of whom contribute less than a hundred bucks a piece. So the effect of campaign financing is in place, but it's not campaign financing.

MR. WILLIAMS: So this is, all because of the structure of the Obama campaign, the support, the support levels they're finding they have on the Internet, a pragmatic decision.

SEN. BIDEN: Well, yes. But it's also a substantive decision in that no one major influence can affect Obama. He has 1,400,000 contributors. Not one of them could say, "If I don't - if you don't change your mind, I'm withdrawing my support." Whereas with campaigns, the reason I was so - I am so supportive of campaign financing, major interests that are able to accumulate hundreds of thousands, in this case, millions of dollars can say, "Hey, look, you don't change your mind, I leave." So in terms of the downside of his not accepting it in terms of influence and big money, there is no influence or big money in his campaign. In terms of undermining the public financing idea for everyone, it doesn't help.

MR. WILLIAMS: Senator Graham, does this mean it's broken forever?

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): It means his word's broken forever on this issue. I think that's what it means more than anything else. You tell people you're going to change this country, you're going to bring about change that people yearn to, to embrace. Senator McCain supported campaign finance reform at his detriment with Senator Feingold on our side. It did not go over well, but John did it anyway. He took a beating to try to change the campaign finance system. Senator Obama looked in cameras all over the country, literally signed his name, "I will accept public financing," and now, for whatever reason, he has broken his word. And is it 1.4 million donors that allows you to break your word? This is reinforcing everything that's wrong with politics. This is a game changer in terms of the general election. This will not go unnoticed by the American people...

SEN. BIDEN: But he did say...

SEN. GRAHAM: ... and it will not be soon forgotten. (my emphasis)

The public financing system that we all are touting here today as great has been abandoned by one candidate, and that wasn't John McCain. [Actually, Huckleberry was the only one on the program who mentioned the current system as being "great".] It's been abandoned because of political expediency. He's a calculating politician. The bottom line about, about Barack Obama, whatever the position, whether it be Iraq, campaign finance reform, public financing, he's going to take a tack that allows him to win. He wants to win beyond anything else, even more than keeping his word. (my emphasis)

[E]arlier polls from the week before and from two weeks ago, our own poll, ... showed less of a balance for Obama than you would have expected because we have all of this anger against the Republicans, we have all these headwinds against John McCain. It should not be as tight a race as the earlier polls were indicating. (my emphasis)

We have seen many tone changes from Barack Obama since he wrapped up the nomination--on taxes, said he might cut corporate taxes, might delay some tax hike; says he's a "free trader"; he made the decision on campaign finance. Look at this terror deal that went through the Congress and is going to be passed. That's a way of taking an issue off the table, and in the pragmatism that Barack Obama is displaying here, Democrats love the, the split personality that David Brooks...

MR. WILLIAMS: Mm-hmm.

MR. HARWOOD: ...my friend wrote about in his column. Liberals love that, and they're seeing, potentially, in Barack Obama, somebody, as your rock hero and Tim Russert's might say, was "born to run" in this campaign. (my emphasis)

Obama leads on domestic, economic and social issues, but McCain is a strong favorite on national security and terrorism. The former POW's personal appeal looms as the strongest barrier to the Democratic victory indicated by the towering majorities that disapprove of President Bush (68 percent) and that fear the country is headed seriously on the wrong track (84 percent).

Despite those fundamental weaknesses in the Republican position, McCain trails Obama in that same poll by only six points, hardly an impossible margin to overcome. What may be crucial in the end is whether people become comfortable with the prospect of Obama as their president. (my emphasis)

At the same briefing, Gibbs and campaign counsel Bob Bauer defended Obama's decision to become the first presidential candidate since the Watergate reforms to decline public financing of his general election campaign.

Gibbs and Bauer in effect blamed McCain, saying repeatedly that he was "gaming the system" by pledging to accept public funds while saying he could not "referee" spending by outside independent groups if it occurred. In fact, McCain had been far more vocal in denouncing such groups on the GOP side than Obama was in criticizing their counterparts playing Democratic presidential politics - even though Obama has claimed the mantle of campaign finance reformer that McCain has long enjoyed. (my emphasis)

By refusing to join McCain in these initiatives in order to protect his own interests, Obama raises an important question: Has he built sufficient trust so that his motives will be accepted by the voters who are only now starting to figure out what makes him tick? (my emphasis)