David Freddoso argues against the notion that Barack Obama lacks a track record, and says Republicans have missed the mark in arguing his inexperience. In his new book The Case Against Barack Obama, Freddoso says that Obama needs to run on the notion that he has no track record, because an examination of his actual work would reveal himself as a hard-Left idealogue instead of a reformer. Politico takes a look at Freddoso’s work:

The first serious negative biography of Senator Barack Obama casts the Democratic nominee as a fake reformer and a real liberal.

“The Case Against Barack Obama,” by National Review’s David Freddoso, blasts Obama for failing to take on the Chicago machine, for listening to “radical advisors,” and for backing “doctrinaire liberal” causes from teachers unions to abortion rights. …

Freddoso’s book, released today by the conservative publishing house Regnery and provided exclusively to Politico by the publisher, occupies a small island in the often-shrill sea of criticism of Obama. As a range of conservatives suggest that Obama is a closet radical, and as McCain’s campaign aims to disqualify him from the White House on the grounds of his international fame, Freddoso makes a case that conservatives should look at the presumptive Democratic nominee’s record.

His thesis: “It’s not that Obama is a bad person. It’s just that he’s like all the rest of them. Not a reformer. Not a Messiah. Just like all the rest of them in Washington. And just like all the other liberals too.”

Freddoso, who writes at National Review, has done extensive research into Barack Obama’s political activities before hitting the national scene at the 2004 Democratic Convention. Obama, he says, is a Daley machine politician, one who avoided efforts at reform that would have damaged that machine.

He specifies one instance in particular, a battle over the presidency of the Cook County Board, which helps operate the machine’s patronage operation. Obama refused to take sides in the battle, effectively kneecapping a reform effort intended to clean up politics in Chicago. Instead, incumbent John Stroger kept his job, and Obama’s silence helped maintain the patronage system.

The GOP needs to make these actual activities by Obama the centerpiece of their criticism, and not Obama’s lack of substance. The latter has only ambiguous value for an electorate looking for change, but not looking for a shift to the hard Left. The more immoderate Obama looks, the more McCain can capture the middle and derail Obama’s cult of personality.

David Freddoso will appear on The Ed Morrissey Show on Thursday afternoon, live, to discuss this book. I have my copy of the book already — it’s out today — and I’ll be reading it this week in advance of the interview. If you’d like to get ahead of the curve as well, order the book now.