Barack Obama bills himself as a new brand of leader poised to drain Washington's swamp of political cynicism.
   
But despite spellbinding calls for "Change We Can Believe In," the Democratic hopeful is not shirking from cold-eyed positioning to boost his hopes of victory over Republican White House hopeful John McCain.
   
Obama has turned down the crowd-swooning oratory since beating Hillary Clinton to the Democratic nomination last month.
   
The Illinois senator has switched to a general election strategy, making a beeline for the fabled political center, with policy adjustments, tonal shifts and speeches extolling faith and patriotism.
   
Obama also appeared to be maneuvering for room on Iraq, after his anti-war stance and calls for immediate troop withdrawals underpinned his primary triumph.
   
But on Thursday, Obama denied he had changed his mind, despite claims from Republicans he had performed another "flip-flop."
   
Political scientist Costas Panagopoulos said Obama's tactics were normal behavior for a presidential candidate.
   
"This is typical in presidential campaigns, to run with more extreme positions in primaries, and then to slowly drift to the center to appeal to the greatest number of voters in a general election," he said.
   
"I think for Obama it is especially crucial, because to some extent he can't run away from his record, which is one of the most liberal voting records in Congress," said Panagopoulos, of New York's Fordham University.
   
Obama worried liberals by blurring previous positions last week to back a Supreme Court rejection of a ban on handguns in the US capital.
   
He also went back on an undertaking to accept public financing for his campaign -- a move which courted criticism but kept his multi-million dollar fundraising juggernaut rolling.
   
Obama also sided with conservative Supreme Court justices, who liberals revile, against a majority ruling that child rapists cannot be executed.
   
But the finessing has not been pain-free.
   
The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial page this week mockingly declared Obama wanted "Bush's Third Term."
   
"Who would have thought that a Democrat would rehabilitate the much-maligned Bush agenda?" the paper said.
   
McCain backers accuse Obama of making craven calculations at odds with his reformist rhetoric.
   
Some liberals are also dismayed.
   
Fierce debate broke out on Obama's own website, after he switched course and backed a new spying bill offering immunity to telecoms firms which cooperated in electronic eavesdropping.
   
"Obama has made a few moves that are really disappointing," wrote one poster named "Elisabeth."
   
"The higher the hopes, the harder to fall and many of us have dared to hope higher than ever before in our lifetimes."
   
A sense that the inspiration might be waning prompted liberal blogger Arianna Huffington to warn Obama not to follow a centrist shift which she said helped doom Democrat John Kerry in 2004.
   
"A political product geared to pleasing America's vacillating swing voters -- the ones who will be most susceptible to the fear-mongering avalanche that has already begun -- would be a fatal blunder."
   
But could liberals have erred in making Obama a vehicle for unsated political hopes?
   
For instance, his pledge to update President George W. Bush's faith-based social work program sits easily with Obama's vow to cross political lines and court evangelicals who often vote Republican.
   
And in the past, Obama has faced claims his stirring rhetoric hides a paucity of policy "beef."
   
"That kind of thing needs to be used selectively. There are times when it might be brilliantly effective, a convention speech for example," said Professor Bruce Buchanan of the University of Texas.
   
The old cliche that politics is the art of the possible may also apply.
   
What use is beautiful rhetoric if Obama can't get elected? In that light, positions palatable to conservative white Democrats in battleground states -- on guns, for instance -- might be prudent.
   
"If you look at the trends in many of these states, there are more and more independents who aren't tied to political parties," Obama told reporters Thursday.
   
"I want to make sure that we are reaching out to them, because I think there's the possibility of a significant realignment."