As spectator sport, politics is way ahead of football, with bone-crunching realism and as much sleight-of-hand as God grants the average mortal of marginal intelligence.

Just like sports on the national level, the figures who dominate are subject to endless analysis, prognostication, and the projection of our innermost fantasies. The highly-paid commentators, usually washed-up figures in their field, blather on about minutae as the crowds cheer and catcall. Vegas will take your money on shifting odds.

The above is by way of preface to a few observations. I am a washed-up figure in the political realm myself, although no one is paying me, and am therefore as qualified as, say, your average hack. But as John Cusack remarks in “Must Love Dogs,” we will press on.

I have been enjoying the controversies of the past week concerning several moves or non-moves of Senator Barack Obama. There seems to be vast confusion in the media and on the blogs. People are outraged, or disappointed, or I-told-you-so-ing all over the place. Everybody who thought they had a handle on this guy who figures to be elected President.

Over the recent past, Obama has:

* declined to participate in public financing, turning down the estimated eighty-four million in taxpayer funds in favor of raising a couple of hundred million on his own.

* supported the Supreme Court decision on guns and the Second Amendment.

* asked his backers to help retire Hillary Clinton’s multi-million-dollar campaign debt, much of it in loans she made to herself.

* bailed out on the FISA bill, with its telecom legal immunity and its nullification of the Fourth Amendment to the constitution which used to protect the people from unlawful searches and seizures.

* delivered a fawning, militaristic speech to the largest pro-Israeli lobby in the U.S.

One could be forgiven for interpreting these developments as evidence that the candidate, whose central message of hope for a much better country has galvanized millions, is actually a slick, standard-brand pol no different in personal architecture than, say, one of the Clintons.

The Chronicle editorially chastised him for his public finance renunciation, pointing to a statement he signed about ten months ago in which he promised to accept it provided the opposition did the same. Now that McCain was signing up for the cash, the story went, Obama ought to do the same. The mainstream media have been unanimous in this opinion. Omitted from most such discourse have been the following points:

1. Public financing, as it stands, limits the candidates but not the national committees. The DNC has about forty million in its coffers; the RNC has eighty million more than that. Also not limited: the ‘independent’ groups, including the guys who paid for the swift-boating of John Kerry. Hundreds of millions, used to go after Obama, and not enough bucks in the treasury to effectively fight back. If Obama agreed to the system as it is, he would be agreeing to get outspent by around two hundred million dollars.

2. McCain, who last year agreed to public financing but did not sign the document, later changed his mind and tried to opt out of it after using his public dollars as collateral for private loans. He did this because he realized that he could raise more outside of the system as soon as he became the presumptive nominee. This opt-out was and is of questionable legality. In March, he went private anyhow, with no constraints, and was able to begin his campaign against Obama while the latter was still using his resources to fend off Clinton all the way into June. McCain’s position now is, obviously, baldly hypocritical, something the media never touched on.

So, as to the public financing flap, Obama did the right thing. I do not want a fool for a President, and neither do you. We’ve had plenty of that and don’t need any more.

The candidate’s statement on guns and the Supreme Court is, of course, a flatly-political position. It may also be reflective of his true opinion to a degree; we don’t really know. But as a political position, considering his interest in carrying Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, not to mention Virginia and a few Rocky Mountain states, it is absolutely right.

Then there’s the matter of the Hillary bailout. This, which hasn’t been subjected to any criticism in the media, as far as I know, is of course commonplace. Losers are in debt because, having lost, they have a lot of difficulty attracting money from their old backers. Deals get made.

Personally, I’m appalled, even though I get the politics of it. As a practical matter, Obama had no choice if he wants to win in November. He needs some things from Clinton; the Clintons need some things from him. The reason it pisses me off this particular time is that I’ve made a couple of (small) contributions to Obama’s campaign. I did it for the same reasons more than a million other folks did. To be asked now to contribute more so that we can help retire the Clintons’ debt to themselves –– which means that we have sponsored Clinton’s attacks on our candidate, as well as paying for his necessary defense –– is pretty outrageous.

I expect the next President to negotiate with people around the world who have interests inimical to those of the U.S. He might as well have started with Hillary.

The other items cited above, the FISA bill and the Israeli pandering, are more disturbing to me, as is the candidate’s generalized saber-rattling when it comes to Afghanistan and executing Bin Laden. These are fundamental matters.

There have certainly been discussions within the Obama campaign about each of these things. What are you going to do? What are we going to say? I have zero doubt that on FISA there is unanimity, including the candidate, to the effect that the legislation is awful. Obama is a constitutional lawyer and a community organizer. He does not support an abrogation of the Bill of Rights. The retroactive immunity for telecoms is also very dangerous in a free society because it endorses making corporate entities arms of the state. Without immunity, corporations can’t safely conspire with the government in violation of our rights; they are held accountable just as is every citizen. With it, another legal barrier to fascism is removed.

The righteous anger on some blogs over this issue, Obama’s failure to take the Senate lead in trying to stop the bill, even to join Feingold’s incipient fillibuster, has a very deep moral basis. As pointed out elsewhere, Obama might have earlier informed Speaker Pelosi that he would stand against the bill in the Senate and that he expected the party’s House leadership to help defeat it before it reached him. He might have had a chat with Steny Hoyer, the useless gasbag majority whip. He might also, still, join with Feingold and take a stand against invoking cloture, the 60% vote to end debate. Arguably, his stature, party leadership, and oratorical skills might be enough to avert passage.

For Obama to do this, of course, would be dangerous to his campaign. McCain’s only chance to beat him is on phony arguments centering around ‘national security.’ If Obama were able to stop the FISA bill, the national debate would swing in the direction McCain wants, away from the war, the economy, and the pillaging of the public treasury by the already grossly wealthy. Obama would be portrayed as ‘weak’ in the ‘war on terror’.

The other issues, Israel and Afghanistan, that’s only talk. FISA is a different proposition because it’s real. It’s a real law with real consequences. The parts of the bill which abrogate the constitution would probably be confirmed by the current and future Supreme Court, stuffed as it is with idiots and liars.

But I have hope, still, even with FISA and all of the above, and here’s why:

In 1960, a young, Catholic, marginally-experienced Senator from Massachusetts, took campaign positions which were alternatively moderate (on civil rights) and pro-military (Taiwan, Cuba, a mythical “missile gap” with the Soviets). There was plenty of suspicion on the left at the time, supporters of Adlai Stevenson, including Eleanor Roosevelt, expressing serious doubts about him.

JFK was not an ideologue. He was a practical, pragmatic politician with a ton of money. He knew he had to protects himself on issues that Richard Nixon might use against him, and he out-flanked Nixon on foreign policy. At the time, America had never elected a Catholic President and some believed it would never happen. Had Kennedy taken more ‘liberal’ positions, he might easily have lost. But he didn’t. And the fact that he, and not Nixon, occupied the White House in October of 1962 almost certainly prevented a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.

Kennedy not only inspired a generation to believe in a better world, he had begun to move decisively toward civil rights and disarmament by 1963. His foreign policies got him killed, but those he inspired, including many young people, kept going.

You and I don’t know Barack Obama and most likely never will. I am guessing. I might be wrong. But there’s one thing about all of this, whoever he is, whether he can win, whether he can stay alive, that looks harder to stop than a candidate, and that’s the power of a mass movement. Change doesn’t come from cynicism or despair but from a belief that the world can be made better.

After twenty-eight years of crap, that belief is almost astonishing. Think I’ll enjoy it for a while.