Reuters reports that “Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama left open the possibility on Thursday of revising his 16-month timetable for withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq, saying he could ‘refine’ his stance after he visits the country.”

Obama’s rightward lurch since the end of the primaries is really an astonishing display of cynicism. It is an old cliché that presidential candidates play to the base during the primaries and then run to the center in the general election, but I don’t know when we’ve seen nearly as clear and shameless an example as we are now witnessing with Obama. If you actually look at the last few decades of presidential elections, most candidates have not been all that different before and after clinching the nomination. Bush was a “compassionate” conservative in both cases, Clinton was a new Democrat in both, and the senior George Bush and Ronald Reagan certainly didn’t attempt any huge changes in persona either. Surely none have reversed themselves on quite as many prominent issues quite as quickly as Obama: from trade to wiretapping, gun control to Iraq.

The substantive moves are all welcome from where I sit, to be sure, but the underlying cynicism has got to worry everyone on all sides. If he can reverse himself so easily now, where will he end up if he were elected? It all raises—in policy rather than rhetorical terms—the same question suggested by his speeches in the primaries: is there a real Barack Obama?