Wouldn’t Be (And Isn’t) Prudent
Posted on July 3rd, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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I don’t see anything more than prudent post-primary adjustment.
One of the most disturbing things about “mainstream” reaction to Obama’s reversals, particularly the reversal regarding the FISA legislation, is the idea that defending the Fourth Amendment against egregious, systematic violation by the government is some far-out extremist position that must be watered down or abandoned in order to appeal to “the middle.” If I were in the political “middle,” I would be deeply offended by the idea that supporting the gutting of core civil liberties is required to win my vote. If it is true that voters in “the middle” will reward assaulting constitutional protections for the illusion of security, some constitutional liberties won’t have much of a chance of surviving another administration like this one. To be clear, this is not just a question of granting telecom immunity, undesirable as that is, but it is a question of resisting warrantless–and therefore illegal–wiretapping.
Greenwald explains more fully why Obama’s justifications for his move are wrong and flatly contradict everything he has said on the matter before now:
In the past, Obama has opposed the type of warrantless eavesdropping which those PAA orders authorize. He’s repeatedly said that the FISA court works and there’s no need to authorize eavesdropping without individual warrants. None of that can be reconciled with his current claim that he supports this FISA “compromise” because National Security requires that those PAA orders not expire and that there be massive changes to FISA. It’s just as simple as that.
It is important to note at this point that this is not an issue, as demagogues will try to make it, of defending the Fourth Amendment or allowing terrorist conspiracies to develop without the possibility of monitoring their communications. It is a question of whether that surveillance will be subjected to judicial scrutiny through the FISA court and whether the government will have to justify its wiretapping in each case, or if the government will be permitted to engage in that surveillance of any and all international communications with essentially no oversight and no accountability. Obama supports giving the government and this administration the unchecked power to spy on anyone they choose to spy on. That’s pretty inspiring, isn’t it?
As Yglesias notes, despite Obama’s reversals his overall platform is still much further to the left than recent Democratic nominees, and it seems to me that this is what the Obama campaign is banking on when the candidate engages in cynical reversals on fundamental questions of constitutional liberty. They are counting on the rest of his agenda to bring along progressives who are appalled and disgusted by this most defensive of cowering crouches on national security, and they may be right. As someone with no sympathy for Obama’s domestic agenda, I find the backtracking on civil liberties to be especially worrisome, since it seems to confirm that we will have the worst of the welfare and security states under a President Obama. This just drives home for me how inexplicable small-government, constitutionalist conservative support for Obama is, since these supporters don’t have the excuse that they generally agree with the candidate’s domestic policies. It also makes it clear why a strong showing by Barr is very important, since neither major candidate seems particularly interested in defending the Constitution.
P.S. I would add that the reflex of some Obama supporters to justify his reversal on the FISA legislation in terms of prudence and/or the political need to “move to the center” reinforces the unhealthy and dangerous pattern of identifying policies that subvert civil liberties and expand the power of government in the name of national security as “centrist.” This makes dissent from such terrible policies to be extremist by definition, which works to marginalise the genuinely more moderate, prudent and (in my view) properly conservative arguments against increasing the power of the security state. If an able rhetorician could make the argument with conviction that constitutional liberties are fundamental and non-negotiable and that we have an obligation to preserve the legacy that has been handed down to us, he might be able to reframe the entire debate. Or he could yield to the Washington consensus that says that civil liberties are the concern of the fringe and can be trampled on as and when necessary.
Filed under: politics
9 Responses to “Wouldn’t Be (And Isn’t) Prudent”
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The questions I ask myself is this: is McCain worse? And what are my choices?
It seems to me that on the one hand you have a candidate who wants to gut the Fourth Amendment with an activist base who strongly opposes the erosion of core constitutional liberties.
On the other, you have a candidate who wants to gut the Fourth Amendment with an activist base who is cheer leading him along the way.
Does electoral support from people who favor civil liberties act as a road block to a president who seeks to violate those liberties? I am guessing the answer is no. The reason for this is simple: no one cares about FISA except activists.
That’s what makes this particularly galling. Obama could have taken any position he cared to and probably not suffer any electoral punishment.
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“it seems to confirm that we will have the worst of the welfare and security states under a President Obama.”
And each one reinforces the other, something I wish I could pound into the heads of ‘mainstream conservatives’ who rail against big government and progressives who rail against foreign policy adventurism and the erosion of civil liberties at home. You don’t get to choose which parts of the devil you dance with.
The old bait and switch. Of course, we’re again faced with the typical “lesser of two evils” scenario which isn’t in itself suprising, but to Daniel’s point about how a “skilled rhetorician” could easily reframe this debate (as I myself often do for a fantasy audience in my bathroom mirror), I wonder why Obama didn’t have the guts (since he certainly has the skill) to do this. If FISA’s defenders are right, the TSP isn’t about the adequacy of the govt.’s current surveillence powers, but rather a basic framework of accountability for what amounts to Big Brother.
Obama knows this, but apparently he doesn’t think he’s able to use the accountability argument to his advantage while defusing the BS argument that civil protections hamstring the WOT. The entire country’s eyes are on him to offer “change”, and yet he’s still deferring to the neoconservative frame of reference on liberty v. security.
By the way, who is this ambiguous “center” that the punditry seems to have pinned down as representing a weird “split the difference” combination of one part watered-down neoconservatism, one part economic liberalism? (0 parts civil libertarian apparently). Doesn’t this just describe the huge swath of generally uninterested, marginally politically aware citizens who believe whatever they’re told and who’s first response to any percieved problem is “There aughta be a law…”
I think any smart political observer would admit, under the present circumstances, Obama caving on this issue isn’t politically necessary or even advantageous–but he did. If he’s worried that the current debate, long commandeered by neconservative assumptions, labels a pro-civil liberties, pro-govt. accountability position “too left”, why doesn’t he take on the establishment in a way consistant with the “brand” he’s constructed for himself? It’s worked so far, why fix it if it ain’t broke?
8 years of Bush has provided him a gaping opportunity to capture and steer political perception and instead he shrinks away from taking a principled stand on almost anything that could be seen as controversial–not by American voters, who are thirsty for a new narrative divorced from Bushian politics, but by the very calcified establishment he claims to oppose. He seems to be absolutely surrendering to the “old politics” pressure for a post-primary pivot, on automatic pilot, without ever testing the waters to see if his “change” shtick actually works on a general electorate. Que the rationalizations of pro-Obama liberals, newly minted “pragmatists” (as long as it’s “their” guy abandoning core principles for supposed electoral gain).
All this is moot of course if Obama is just a wolf in sheep’s clothing and accepts the whole “pre/post 9/11″ interpretation of civil liberties as defined by the PNAC boys.
As a progressive, I am surprised (and that in itself is depressing to have to admit) to hear a ‘conservative’ in this day actually defend the Constitution rather than the right of the ‘unitary executive’ to do whatever he feels like. But why do you say it is demagoguery to contend that the Fourth Amendment rights are at issue here? The bush regime is claiming the right to uninhibited access to any citizen’s documents, mails, and conversations. Why is this not manifestly an issue of illegal search and seizure?
I think I phrased that poorly. What I meant was that the demagogues are saying that you have to choose between the 4th Amendment and antiterrorism. Defenders of the 4th Amendment are in the right. To be absolutely clear: warrantless wiretapping is illegal and outrageous, and I applaud those who are opposing it.
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What I don’t hear discussed is Obama’s “reversal” on FISA came after he became the frontrunner. If elected he stands to inherit the NSA wiretap files without the political risk that Bush runs if the details of the wiretap programs become widely know. He didn’t create the program; he just inherited them.
He can have his justice department mine the archives to find all sorts of crimes by real or imagined enemies. And he can claim not only was it not his doing that created the evidence but he even voted against intrusive rollbacks of the fourth amendment.
I have tried to make that point, but it is certainly one that should be restated as often as possible.