Politics, the representative kind, has some similarities with marriage.

As the saying goes, when you marry someone you are essentially marrying three people at once- the person you think you are marrying, the person he or she really is, and the person he or she will become because of your marriage.

In a representative democracy, a candidate is expected to emerge from a local base, caring for the local interest. When running for office, a candidate must appeal to the party base during the primary and transition to a general election when the candidate will address the concerns of the whole electorate which will include opposition parties and independents. And when the candidate finally gets into office, he or she confronts what the poet, T.S. Eliot, called the shadow between the idea and the reality.

In essence, when we elect a politician, we elect three persons at once – the person the we think the politician is, the person the politician really is and the person the politician will become because we elected him or her.

It was the same with George H. Bush, Bill J. Clinton and George W. Bush. And so shall it be whether John S. McCain becomes president or Barack H. Obama. Thinking otherwise is wallowing in illusion.

What is important is the hope that the politician so elected will not via so far off from the foundation of the supporters. As long as the politician maintains the core belief of his or her primary constituencies, all shall be well. What is devastating is when a politician goes off on a tangent to the point that he or she becomes unrecognizable to him or her self and to the followers.

One of the mysteries of governance which many outsiders are unfamiliar with is the enormous secrecy associate with running a government. There are a lot of things that only a few top government functionaries know. Some are so grave with far reaching consequences that they have the power to force a turn around of policy positions and initiatives suggested during a campaign.

As the Obama and McCain campaigns go into full gear, I expect people on both sides to call both candidates for flip flopping. Some will say outright that a particular candidate is lying. Such situation is inevitable in today’s fluid political arena where the reality changes in hours and not in days.

For Obama, the heat is on as his campaign transitions into a national campaign. Be it the turn around on the FISA bill, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or about accepting public finance for the general election, Obama is being strategic, moving to the center where elections are won.

It is expected that the other side will turn these issues as cases against Obama. They will do so not because their candidate is not doing the same. (If he is not, it must be a deficiency and one reason why he is reorganizing and arranging his campaign, again). Instead, the other side will make the case out of fear that their opponent is closing in on voters in the middle.

It is normal for the other side to scream. The louder they scream the more likely it is that their own campaign is in trouble. Politicians will say, “I care about being right than being popular.” But no politician will ever say I care about sticking to a position of yesterday made with yesterday’s reality than winning an election. As sad as it may be, a successful politician is the one who wins elections and not the one who sticks to a position when the reality has changed.

No opponent will complain that a politician flip-flopped unless the flip-flop landed the politician where the opponent did not want the politician to be.

For all the beauties of Obama’s candidacy, it will be worth nothing if he fails to win the election.

I am confident that Obama will withstand these cases against him and win the presidency of the United States of America. And that is essentially what scares the opponents the most and not a decision to move to the center or reverse himself on certain issues – a maneuvering the opponents thoroughly understand is the very nature of the beast called politics.