This week will bring yet hurdle hop in the long distance presidential campaign of Barack Obama.

Somewhere in the U.S. on Friday, he and Hillary Clinton will appear together on stage before a huddled mass, clasping hands and raising their arms heavenward in the universal sign for solidarity.

The day before, the big-time fundraisers for both camps will meet in Washington to see if they can patch up their differences and work together to raise cash for Obama’s already lush campaign coffers -- millions that are being stashed away to defend the Democratic nominee from the approaching monsoon season of Republican negativity.

Polls show that, as a voting bloc, Latinos, who had been mostly for Clinton, have joined the Obama bandwagon. And, from other corners, the party faithful are rallying behind the man.

But, it’s not categorical. Take, for example, Democratic Rep. Dan Boren. He announced this week that he will not be working for Obama because his mostly rural, eastern Oklahoma district is conservative and “I’ve got to reflect my district.”

Boren -- son of a former long-time U.S. senator from the Sooner State who has endorsed Obama -- said the candidate has a liberal voting record that “does not reflect working in a bipartisan fashion.”

It is true that Obama does not follow the conservative track in his voting -- thank goodness -- but he has certainly been known to cross the aisle. Might Rep. Boren be engaging in a bit of revisionism in the interest of covering his own you-know-what? No doubt.

But this speaks to the continuing conundrum of a representative democracy. Is the elected official obligated to purely reflect the opinions of his constituency? Or is he or she supposed to be represent his people’s interests?  The two are not necessarily the same; in fact, they’re often not.

If the junior Boren were the leader his father was, he would use his influence to educate and persuade the people of the Second Congressional District of Oklahoma about the choices to be made, rather than cave to their misguided mindsets. If, after that, they still hold to their original positions, then there might be some legitimacy to his disloyalty to the Democratic ticket, although it is still a lazy way to govern.

Of course, there is one other possibility: That Boren’s refusal to endorse Obama actually betrays his own thinking, irrespective of what his constituency wants. After all, we don’t really believe that none of the Democrats who profess or appear to be on board for Obama are nursing some real antipathy toward the presumptive nominee, now do we? Some of it is resentment because he is such a shooting star, while they have labored long and hard in the rank and file. Some of it is because he’s a black man and, for the life of them, they just can’t watch one of “them” become the most powerful individual on the planet. Some of it is because Obama beat out their candidate of choice. Some of it is a combination.

To hedge his bet, Boren has said he will cast his vote for Obama along with the rest of his state’s delegation at the Democratic convention in August -- a matter of procedure to which, no doubt, he hopes his disgruntled constituents will pay no mind, for if they did, they would see that he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth.  

Apparently, that’s not a problem for Mr. Boren. “I think this is an important time for our country,” he told a reporter. “We’re facing a terrible economic downturn. We have high gasoline prices. We have problems in our foreign policy.”

And your people support the status quo; the same conservatism that made it so?

Lead, mister man, or get out of the way.