Why Obama Voted Against Roberts

A friend comments:

Nice find Andrew. The fact is the "commerce clause" is a good example of how parts of the Constitution are extremely ambiguous and don't allow originalist interpretations to prevail and it was in this context Obama mentioned it. That it should re-emerge in the context of the health care debate may speak more to Obama's prescience as a constitutional scholar than to his foresight. If you were following the arc of Obama's political career you would know it was Hillary Clinton and not Obama who campaigned for mandates. As a matter of fact, Obama campaigned against them. Mandates only became part of his policy objective well after he was elected president and was just an example of him reaching out to conservatives and trying to bridge the gap because it was people like Gingrich and the Heritage Foundation that were pushing this idea before Mitt Romney adopted it in Massachusetts. As a political coward, Obama went towards mandates without a public option as a way of lowering the ranks of the uninsured without offending private health care industry, a sort of have it both ways approach typical of Obama - maintain cushy relations with the elite of private industry while performing a public good, but simultaneously alienating all sides.