How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the followin

Hightop · Jan 18, 2012

How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?

(1) Codify indefinite detention into law;

(2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process;

(3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens;

(4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets;

(5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible;

(6) enter and prosecute such a war;

(7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports;

(8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots;

(9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy;

(10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits;
(11) preside over federal raids on medical mar1juana dispensaries;

(12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed);

(13) reauthorize the Patriot Act;

(14) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.

DonnyMost · Jan 18, 2012

One thing I know is, Hightop wouldn't be that upset about it.

Major · Jan 18, 2012

I would think our hypothetical GOP Presidential candidate was tone deaf and a terrible campaigner to be focusing a campaign on those issues.

rhadamanthus · Jan 18, 2012

You could at least give a hat-tip to the Atlantic and Conor Friedersdorf...

rhadamanthus · Jan 18, 2012

Major said: ↑

I would think our hypothetical GOP Presidential candidate was tone deaf and a terrible campaigner to be focusing a campaign on those issues.
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Irony overload.

pirc1 · Jan 18, 2012

DonnyMost said: ↑

One thing I know is, Hightop wouldn't be that upset about it.
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who knows, Mccain could have cut NASA budget, wonder if he would be posting a ton of anti Republican messages then.

Major · Jan 18, 2012

I voted in the poll that I'd have been very happy, because in an election that was about the economy, a Presidential candidate going around talking about issues that were not a priority would be laughed at, making a Democratic victory quite easy.

thadeus · Jan 18, 2012

Hightop will be voting for Mitt Romney.

mc mark · Jan 18, 2012

Hightop should read Andy's Newsweek article.

Dubious · Jan 18, 2012

They didn't?

Classic · Jan 18, 2012

Sadly, I feel those things happen with either party in power.

rhadamanthus · Jan 18, 2012

mc mark said: ↑

Hightop should read Andy's Newsweek article.
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mcmark should read Conor's rebuttal. It absolutely shreds Andy's essay from start to finish.

The Newsweek cover headline for Sullivan's piece is "Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?" It's entirely defensible to point out that many critiques of Obama are laughably disconnected from reality -- I've done that myself on many occasions -- so it's arguably a fair headline.

But the one I've chosen is fair too: "Why Focus on Obama's Dumbest Critics?"

No, Obama isn't a radical Kenyan anti-colonialist. But he is a lawbreaker and an advocate of radical executive power. What precedent could be more radical than insisting that the executive is empowered to draw up a kill list of American citizens in secret, without telling anyone what names are on it, or the legal justification for it, or even that it exists? What if Newt Gingrich inherits that power?

He may yet.

Over the years, Sullivan has confronted, as few others have, American transgressions abroad, including torture, detainee abuse, and various imperial ambitions. He's long drawn attention to civil-liberties violations at home too, as a solo blogger and as lead editor and writer of a blogazine. When I worked for Sullivan, he not only published but actively encouraged items I found that highlighted civil-liberties abuses by the Obama Administration, and since I parted ways with The Daily Dish, he and the Dish team have continued to air critiques of Obama on these questions.

But his Newsweek essay fits the pattern I've lamented of Obama apologists who tell a narrative of his administration that ignores some of these issues and minimizes the importance of others, as if they're a relatively unimportant matter to be set aside in a sentence or three before proceeding to the more important business of whether the president is being critiqued fairly by obtuse partisans.
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Beyond strenuously objecting to the focus of his piece and what it doesn't mention, and agreeing with some of Sullivan's points, I have important disagreements with others. "Where Bush talked tough and acted counter-productively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war," Sullivan writes. "Since he took office, al Qaeda's popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted." But it's surely relevant that, according to surveys like this one from James Zogby in 2011, "After improving with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, U.S. favorable ratings across the Arab world have plummeted. In most countries they are lower than at the end of the Bush Administration, and lower than Iran's favorable ratings (except in Saudi Arabia)." And in the areas where Obama's drone strikes are killing innocent civilians, he is trading short-term terrorist deaths for the possibility that our policies will create more terrorists in the long run. It's a tradeoff some people consider prudent; but that's different from saying he is "winning the propaganda war." In fact, the predictable effect of some of his policies is to increase hatred of the U.S.

Says Sullivan, "Obama's foreign policy, like Dwight Eisenhower's or George H.W. Bush's, eschews short-term political hits for long-term strategic advantage." But there are cases when the opposite is true. When the CIA sponsored a fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan as a ruse to get bin Laden's DNA, the Dish cited commentators who argued that it was egregiously shortsighted, and quoted an infectious-disease specialist's fears "that disclosure of the CIA's vaccine ruse actually will turn out to kill more people than bin Laden ever did." The bin Laden raid itself, combined with the steady drone campaign in Pakistan, has done so much to destabilize Pakistan that its generals, fearful of American interference, are more frequently moving its nuclear weapons around the country in lightly guarded trucks, as reported by Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder. Surely Sullivan should acknowledge that it is possible that the raid and drone strikes will ultimately turn out to be a case of sacrificing long-term strategic advantages for a short-term hit. (That might not be the case -- the point is that it's premature to give Obama credit. We're still operating in the short run.)

Says Sullivan, "From the start, liberals projected onto Obama absurd notions of what a president can actually do in a polarized country, where anything requires 60 Senate votes even to stand a chance of making it into law. They have described him as a hapless tool of Wall Street, a continuation of Bush in civil liberties, a cloistered elitist unable to grasp the populist moment that is his historic opportunity." Without getting into all the issues contained in that passage, it is in fact true that Obama represents a continuation of Bush policies on civil liberties! And in some respects he has gone even farther than Bush.

"Under Obama, support for marriage equality and mar1juana legalization has crested to record levels," Sullivan writes. Yes, but no thanks to Obama, who opposes both marriage equality and mar1juana legalization! This is the height of illegitimate Obama apologia: attributing to his credit policies he hasn't advanced because a change in public opinion happens to have coincided with his tenure. By this logic Bush also deserves credit for the increasing support for gay marriage during the aughts.

To Sullivan, this is the big picture story of the Obama Administration: "the president begins by extending a hand to his opponents; when they respond by raising a fist, he demonstrates that they are the source of the problem; then, finally, he moves to his preferred position of moderate liberalism and fights for it without being effectively tarred as an ideologue or a divider." Like the whole of his essay, it takes as its lodestar the two-party system and defines Obama as a centrist within it, as if the most coherent way to judge him is by comparison with other establishment politicians.

But centrism inside a consensus that is steadily eroding civil liberties, doing away with checks and balances, and increasing executive power is nothing to support, never mind something to celebrate. "Yes, Obama has waged a war based on a reading of executive power that many civil libertarians, including myself, oppose. And he has signed into law the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial (even as he pledged never to invoke this tyrannical power himself)," Sullivan states. "But he has done the most important thing of all: excising the cancer of torture from military detention and military justice. If he is not re-elected, that cancer may well return."

That sums it up, doesn't it?
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Rocketman95 · Jan 18, 2012

pirc1 said: ↑

who knows, Mccain could have cut NASA budget, wonder if he would be posting a ton of anti Republican messages then.
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Nah, he's not black.

SamFisher · Jan 18, 2012

Dubious said: ↑

They didn't?
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Seriously - the GOP presidential debates in 2008 were a race to see who could "double guantanamo" faster...This is exactly what they supported then.

Hightop · Jan 18, 2012

Groogrux said: ↑

Nah, he's not black.
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Awesome - such a tired and cliched response. You can't be really trying are you? Or are you just still stuck in 2009? I'd say you are completely naive and clueless, it's kind of cute. But it must really suck seeing everything you thought was so righteous and wonderful ending up being so evil. Denial is a painful process. Maybe you and the old Nazis can form a support group.

SamFisher · Jan 18, 2012

Hightop said: ↑

Awesome - such a tired and cliched response. You can't be really trying are you? Or are you just still stuck in 2009? I'd say you are completely naive and clueless, it's kind of cute. But it must really suck seeing everything you thought was so righteous and wonderful ending up being so evil. Denial is a painful process. Maybe you and the old Nazis can form a support group.
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nerve strike noted.

glynch · Jan 18, 2012

Dubya ran as a "compassionate conservative", was a radical right winger, killed a few hundred thousand Iraqis, wasted a couple of trillion $$ in a stupid war, gave tax breaks worth a trillion or two to the upper classes, deregulated us into a financial collapse and then wanted the tax payers to bail out the big banks. Most so called "libertarians" as well as "conservatives" voted for him.

How did they feel?

Classic · Jan 18, 2012

glynch said: ↑

Dubya ran as a "compassionate conservative", was a radical right winger, killed a few hundred thousand Iraqis, wasted a couple of trillion $$ in a stupid war, gave tax breaks worth a trillion or two to the upper classes, deregulated us into a financial collapse and then wanted the tax payers to bail out the big banks. Most so called "libertarians" as well as "conservatives" voted for him.

How did they feel?
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Being an uninformed and young voter in 2000, I can say remorseful.

JuanValdez · Jan 18, 2012

I'm not happy about any of those things. But, a Republican president would serve up the same crap and then some. Gotta vote for either Kang or Kodos.

B-Bob · Jan 18, 2012

Classic said: ↑

Sadly, I feel those things happen with either party in power.
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Winner winner, reality dinner.

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How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the followin

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How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the followin

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I would have been really happy! :-)

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