Category: Barack Obama

Obama’s America

I feel like I’m in Bizarro World when the Democratic President and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize authorizes the assassination of an American citizen, without trial — something that not even George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and John Yoo had the temerity to do. Glenn Greenwald’s analysis of how outrageous this is is a must-read. Greenwald documents all the ways and places both Obama and renowned liberal jurists like Antonin Scalia and Yoo say that actions short of assassination of an American citizen are not allowable. Obama himself opposed the detention of Americans without habeas corpus as fundamentally beyond a President’s power.

There are plenty of places where the Obama administration have continued on the path of the Bush administration when it comes to protecting a very expansive view of executive powers. This is one of the rare instances where Obama is actually going substantially further than Bush. Sadly, this most appalling assertion of executive power is also infinitely more offensive than warrantless wiretapping or detention without habeas corpus of Americans.  The President just said he can assassinate an American without trial. What a sad day for our country and for the rule of law.

Nuclear Posture Review

Say what you will about the Obama administration’s shortcomings in policy at home (and I’ve said a lot), but his work on reducing the global threat from nuclear weapons is truly admirable. From securing a new arms agreement with Russia to last night’s announcement that the US will not launch a nuclear attack against a country that is compliant with the NPT, the President is making bold strides that are finally commensurate with his campaign promises of Change and Hope. The world is a dangerous place, but possessing the ability to turn a country to glass at the slightest threat only makes the world more dangerous. Proportionality seems to be the core of the Nuclear Posture Review. Hopefully this attitude towards proportional military actions is extended in the future for US foreign policy. After all, were we dealing in proportional responses instead of preventive attacks, we would not have gone to war against Iraq. In that regard, this new position adopted by the Obama administration isn’t just a revision of decades of nuclear uncertainty, but a rebuttal to the essential attitudes that drove the Bush administration.

Leo Hindery on Dissent

Leo Hindery has a great piece on Huffington Post about the need for the administration to shift its focus and stop triangulating against the left to set itself out as moderate and reasonable.

It’s pretty obvious that there are people in the administration telling the president every day that he’s exactly ‘where he needs to be’ in the tug-of-war between Progressives on the left and the Tea Party-goers on the right. But there’s a big difference between moving away from the ‘crazies’ and ignoring your true political base, which I would argue for President Obama is mostly the American workers who gave him victories in those states that John Kerry unfortunately was not able to win in 2004.

Those of us at that dinner desperately want President Obama to succeed, but even more desperately we want to see the entirety of his/our government focused on a full and fair economic recovery that quickly creates and then retains millions of new good-quality jobs. The House Members among us at dinner were compelled in Obama’s first year to accept compromises on the stimulus package and on the bank bailouts, and we all grew to accept (if not really like) the administration’s ‘promise’ that after health care reform, everything would be about jobs, jobs, jobs.

Beyond winning politically, as I said yesterday, there has to be an intentional effort to make the public understand the value and importance of government as a positive factor in Americans’ lives.

What’s Next?

As regular readers know, I haven’t spent a lot of time over the first 15 months of the Obama administration feeling great about how things are going. But the passage of healthcare, while not the bill that I would have written in the slightest, does allow for an opening for the administration to do more elsewhere. It’s undoubtedly a political victory that came at a high price; but that cost must be leveraged into momentum to accomplish more things. This one law, historic though it may be, will not completely inoculate Democrats from electoral perils in November.

In The West Wing President Jed Bartlett frequently ended discussions by asking his staff, “What’s next?” The statement was definitive, making clear that the fictional President was ready to address something new. I’ll certainly grant that there is a lot of possibilities for what is next for President Obama. Even last week, he was able to bring together a major nuclear arms deal with Russia. But there needs to be a clear statement about where this administration is heading over the next eight months.

Moreover, the healthcare victory should embolden Democrats to push their agenda farther and faster. Maybe that means working on high level regulation of the financial industry, while simultaneously pushing through smaller infrastructure and jobs bills to help the Main Street economy recover. There’s need for comprehensive immigration reform, with or without Republican support. There could be a major reevaluation of Pentagon spending on Cold War era weapons systems that have no value in the fight against small groups of terrorists and irregular insurgents.

In short, now is the time for President Obama to push for a Democratic agenda, big and small, high profile and low. We can’t afford to spend another 15 months on the next issue, whatever it is. Obama and the Democratic majority has to produce results and show the public that they are the best choice to govern America now and in the future. And while they’re doing this, every argument must tie back to the importance of government as a social support network for all Americans, the value of us coming together to care for and protect each other. The Teabaggers will only keep trying to tear apart not just this administration, but the idea of government. It’s up to the President and Democratic leaders to fight back against this anti-democratic (small d) rhetoric.  Failure to do so, coupled with a failure to achieve more legislation that helps working American, will lead to electoral defeat.

We’re not at the point yet where the results of November’s election are clear. But President Obama setting out his priorities and pushing hard and fast for them will be one of the best lines of defense for the Democratic majority. Now is not the time for timidity. We need the President to tell the country what’s next.

Obama Threatens Intelligence Oversight Veto

Another day, another way in which the Obama administration is pulling from the Bush administration playbook word for word when it comes to oversight of intelligence and restoring the rule of law in the United States. Oh and the veto is also being threatened because the legislation in question would fund a renewed investigation of the anthrax attacks perpetrated following 9/11, which the FBI recently declared to be neatly solved. The administration doesn’t want to “undermine public confidence” in an FBI probe of the attacks “and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions.”

I remember when transparency and oversight we promises made by Barack Obama, the candidate. Now they’re punchlines.

Obama & The Judiciary

James Oliphant of the LA Times has a disturbing piece highlighting the slow pace the Obama administration has gone about filling vacancies in the federal judiciary. Republican obstructionism has further slowed the pace of administration nominees reaching the bench. Combined, President Obama has had only minimal impact on the shape of the federal bench and time is running out for that to change, as midterm elections look only likely to decrease the President’s ability to put liberal judges on the courts.

The judiciary is an area where we absolutely needed our 44th President to make a huge stride forward. The Bush administration had tremendous success adding young, ultra-conservative jurists to the federal bench. Only strong efforts by this administration to appoint young, liberal judges can counteract Bush’s move to change the makeup of the federal courts, which according to the LA Times is now made of 60% Republican appointments (seven of the nine the Supreme Court  justices are Republican appointees). A failure for the Obama administration to aggressively try to balance out the makeup of the judiciary will have impact on what America looks like over the next thirty to forty years.

We need President Obama to dramatically move the ball down the field. The lack of progress is truly disheartening, as this is an area where I’d assumed a constitutional law professor would easily see the importance of aggressive action. Instead we see the same lack of willingness to fight – to spend political capital – on ensuring his picks are confirmed as we see elsewhere on labor reform, the rule of law, and key pieces of health care reform.

Not “You” – “Conservatives”

Glenn Greenwald writes of President Obama’s trend towards caving to conservative fear-mongers who don’t want civil liberties and the rule of law to be preserved whenever terrorism comes:

If, in the face of “GOP demands” that Mohamed be denied a civilian trial, he again reverses himself — this time on the highest-profile civil liberties decision of his administration — he will unmistakably reveal himself, even to his most enamored admirers, as someone so utterly devoid not only of principle but also of resolve: you just blow on him a little and he falls down and shatters into little pieces.

No Glenn, not “you.” Conservatives. President Obama has shown incredible resolve when it comes to resisting the demands, requests, and entreaties of progressives. The pressure on Obama from the right may be slight and he may cave with great consistency, but this is in stark contrast to how he stands up boldly to those on the left who ask him to keep promises he made and beliefs he claims to espouse.

There have been many places where I’ve been disappointed with the Obama administration – war policy, healthcare, and labor reform to name a few. But none is more infuriating than the absolute chickenshittery the administration has put forth when it comes to the rule of law and restoring the Constitution. It’s still early, but a reversal of civilian trials for the 9/11 defendants for purely political reasons (though who can honestly think this is a political calculus that is correct?) would be the nail in the coffin for any hopes I’ve held out that President Obama would fix the damage George W. Bush did to the rule of law in America.

Must-Read on Rahm

Dan Froomkin has a must-read analysis of the recent stories in the DC press about how great Rahm Emanuel is. There’s a lot of good stuff, but this line stood out to me:

The fact is that after a campaign that appealed so successfully to idealism, Obama hired a bunch of saboteurs of hope and change.

Rahm was simply their chief of staff. And now, this hypercompetitive bantam rooster is attempting to blame others for what went wrong. That’s evidently so important to him that he’s trying to take a victory lap around the wreckage of what was once such a promising presidency.

What’s so offensive to me isn’t the presence of long, hagiographic pieces on Rahm Emanuel. It’s that these pieces are being pitched and written while key decisions that affect the path of the administration are being made. Rahm and his loyalists are spinning these stories at a point in time when both the Obama presidency and Democratic majorities are facing incredibly rocky political terrain. The timing is so wrong it is in itself offensive.

Patience Doesn’t Yield Results

President Obama’s calculus “that by listening carefully and appealing to reason he can bring people together to get results” fundamentally fails to understand that Republicans will not do anything that they see politically benefiting Democrats.  The GOP is not a good faith partner. They do not want to pass comprehensive health care reform. Bringing them along for the ride only succeeds in watering down the quality of what legislation is finally put to a vote, while not garnering a single Republican supporter. The administration simply does not seem willing to get that the GOP is not a good faith partner in negotiation on any subject. Continuing to treat them as such will only lead to worse political and policy outcomes, which will be less appealing to the general public and less effective at achieving their goals. Bipartisanship is not an outcome that helps a single American. 

They Do What They Want

Duncan Black is 100% right. The White House has lead on health care reform to the place where they want to see the legislation being. That place does not include a public health insurance option because the White House does not want there to be one. They are not currently trying to get one and its absence from their proposal almost certainly assures that there will not be one. Duncan writes:

The White House released their health plan. It didn’t contain a public option. Their health plan didn’t have to be the final say, it could just be a negotiating document, but they didn’t even bother to put it in, to pretend they wanted it. Contra Ezra, they did lead, they expressed their preferences. They may or may not publicly beat back a public option if it shows any chance of being revived in the Senate, but they have made their desires known.

There isn’t just a lack of leadership for key progressive pieces from the White House in health care reform. It’s that they are actively support alternative positions to progressive reform, most clearly on the public option. This is most directly attributable to the fact that the White House does not want the same things the progressive activist base want.