IT'S AN UTTERLY remarkable American story that Barack Obama, by means of extraordinary energy, intelligence, charm and eloquence, is on the verge of being the first black to secure the Democratic nomination for President, but no one who has been paying attention can buy his pledge of change. He offers more of the same.

Beginning most notably with FDR's New Deal, the federal government has been extending its reach in America, ignoring constitutional restraints, usurping the responsibilities of other levels of government and involving itself in virtually every aspect of our lives to the point where we now face a major crisis. Despite little comment by White House aspirants, our entitlement programs are about to explode in our faces.

The need is to restructure them before massive retirements by baby boomers and otherwise retreat from the leviathan state, but Obama talks endlessly of the very opposite: answering every possible individual problem with a massive program. His strategy for the common good -- boiled down to a few words -- is to tax more and spend more, including more on a new entitlement, universal health insurance. For additional evidence of his interventionist ambitions, look at the speech in St. Paul, Minn., earlier this week when he proclaimed himself the Democratic nominee.

He said that if his Republican opponent, John McCain, spent more time in America's schools, he would "understand that we can't afford to leave the money behind for No Child Left Behind; that we owe it to our children to invest in early childhood education; to recruit an army of new teachers and give them better pay and more support; to finally decide that in this global economy, the chance to get a college education should not be a privilege for the wealthy few, but the birthright of every American. That's the change we need in America."

First off, of course, there's nothing very new or different about either Republican or Democratic Presidents ignoring the Constitution's enumerated powers and intruding on the state prerogative of education -- No Child Left Behind is President Bush's brainchild, after all. Obama's plan for federal financing of preschool education amounts to still another entitlement, and on top of that, he wants to help finance education for teachers and dictate how they are paid. The idea that a college education has become "a privilege for the wealthy few" is laughable nonsense, but even if it were true, his idea of handing out thousands of dollars to the majority of students would only inflate tuition costs while being terribly unfair to young people who skip higher education.

He may earn votes this way -- there are always people happy to get something for nothing -- but such ideas are beyond our means, encroach further on our liberties, would likely prove less effectual than many plans coming to the fore in the states and at private institutions, and march us ever close to the semi-socialist European welfare governments. Ironically, the Europeans are beginning to march in the opposite direction -- either that, or they settle for becoming third-rate economies.

For all his rants about lobbyists, Obama represents no break from ties to special interests or independence from popular but ill-advised positions; he was for the lavish farm bill, he supports unions in their misbegotten opposition to free trade, he's an ethanol man through and through, and maybe he made at least some voters in Nevada happy with his opposition to the perfectly acceptable nuclear waste depository there. Unlike McCain, he has not been much of a compromiser in the U.S. Senate; if a bill is not sufficiently leftist, it gets no support from him.

Some movement toward the center would be welcome from this candidate, who maybe doesn't have to move an inch to win the general election. Some polls show a close race, but if polling on distant events were to be trusted, the presumptive candidates today would be Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani.

For much recited reasons, this looks to be a decisively Democratic year, and Obama has destiny written all over him unless, maybe, voters decide they really do want the change he has promised.

Jay Ambrose is a columnist living in Colorado. He can be reached at SpeaktoJay@aol.com.