The LA times has exposed a nice little bit of hypocrisy from Barack Obama’s campaign. His campaign is now directly soliciting high-six-figure checks from unions:

In an example of the campaign’s late-innings effort, a very senior Obama campaign official called the political director of one of the largest labor unions about two weeks ago and asked for a $500,000 contribution on top of a similar amount that had been committed just a few weeks before, according to the union official.

The campaign, further more, refuses to deny whether Obama is doing it directly:

A spokesman for the campaign, Hari Sevugan, declined to say whether Obama himself had become involved in these fundraising efforts or to confirm any details of work done by others from the campaign.

Now, my problem here isn’t that he is doing it. It is the hypocrisy of attacking it and then doing and claiming that he is clean. This “say Mister Clean, do Mr. Washington” pattern is the pattern of his campaign. Read on for details.

First he says that he will take public financing. Then he doesn’t. His argument is that he gets most of his money from small donors. It’s not true, as noted by Open Secrets.

In the primary, he attacked outside groups for attacking him, but thought it was fine that they attacked Obama. He also invoked Republican outside groups — and there are none this year — when he dropped out of public financing. At the same time, AFL-CIO is dropping $54m, and just last week the the Obama campaign started sending signals to outside groups that they should turn it on.

Indeed, as a comical exercise, just google “obama outside groups”. Here’s what you get:

• Obama Aide Warns Against “Shadowy Outside Groups” in Fundraising Pitch

• Outside Groups Aid Obama, Their Vocal Critic

• Obama: Don’t Fund the Outside Groups

• Obama favorite of outside groups

• Source: Obama To Start Looking The Other Way On 527s

The only “Change I Can Believe In” there is the changing on the dime for his own political advantage.