Obama Started Killing Americans, But I Mean…I Had Healthcare

The Obama administration has filed a brief arguing that no one can legally challenge their order for the assassination of Anwar al-Aulaqi because it would compromise “state secrets” (Washington Post, Glenn Greenwald). To review: Anwar al-Aulaqi is an American citizen living in Yemen. While he is suspected of aiding Al-Qaeda, he has never been convicted or even charged with a crime in the US courts. It is probable that he is guilty of crimes, and possible that he could be convicted, but Obama has pre-empted that by ordering his assassination, which can be carried out even if he is located outside of a combat-zone.

Claiming the power to assassinate Americans is odious enough, but the Obama administration has raised the stakes by claiming the courts cannot hear the case. Given the way the state secrets claim is made, does anyone imagine that the administration would ever allow a legal challenge to any assassination without crying about state secrets?

In effect, the administration is trying to lay the groundwork for a right to kill Americans that is not subject to real judicial oversight. So long as the legislature is cowed, the constraints on the President would be extremely weak. I suppose it’s nice to think that Obama isn’t the type to abuse this–though I hope you’re asking yourself what kind of man asserts this power–but does that change all that much? What matters are the powers themselves, not the man holding them.  Obama is not a tyrant, but he is repeatedly demanding tyrannical powers.  Not only may future Presidents be less trustworthy, the powers themselves are abhorrent.

I would not want to slander the majority of Democrats by saying that they’ll support this decision just because it’s Obama. That would be unfair, as most Democrats have the good sense to say that this kind of decision is really just awful, before pivoting and talking about healthcare. With this unpleasant business forgotten, they can get on to explaining how the “professional left” is full of people who “need to be drug tested”, see the glass as “half full”, and act petulant when the President doesn’t give us “world peace.”

There’s too many accomplices out there.

Obama Orders The Assassination Of A US Citizen

I’m on the bus, and extremely busy to boot, but it’s worth attending to this story. Have a look at Glenn Greenwald’s report on the subject.

Taking America Too Seriously

I just got a reminder of why I don’t truly like Andrew Sullivan’s commentary, even though I often find much of it worthwhile:

If any person has done more to advance some measure of calm, reason and peace in this troubled word lately, it’s president Obama. I think the Cairo speech and the Wright speech alone merited this both bridging ancient rifts even while they remain, of course, deep and intractable. He has already done more to heal the open wound between the West and Islam than anyone else on the planet.

I’d just add one caveat: the American people who elected him deserve part of the credit too. Now he needs partners to help him.

Andrew Sullivan buys into American exceptionalism to an embarrassing degree.  He’s the perfect example of a foreign policy liberal in my typology (inspired by FDR): conservatives say “America is always right”, liberals say “this is a betrayal of America’s nature–we’re always right except this time”, leftists say “same old shit from America.”†   I think Matt Welch is entirely on target:

Among many other things, this selection illustrates the United States’ way-too-oversized role in the world’s imagination.

I do think Obama’s remarks were almost perfect.  Not a note in there that suggests he thinks he’s being awarded for special accomplishments he made.  There was a lot of danger that he’d react awkwardly to an award this premature.

Update: James Fallows has a nice breakdown of Obama’s speech and why it was good.

† I admit that it makes the taxonomy look bad that I come out as a leftist.  It’s even worse that it implies Daniel Larison doesn’t exist…maybe I should just give up.

I’m Sorry That I Was Not Even Meaner To ‘Birthers’

Leave it to the National Review to be the publication that lets me know that when Barack Obama was born, two separate Hawaiian newspapers did announcements.

Rush’s Limbaugh’s Newest Bit Of Crazy

Just a quick note, in case you haven’t properly maintained your belief that Rush Limbaugh is crazy.  He’s a birther.  That is, he’s one of the people who believes that Barack Obama has not satisfactorily demonstrated that he was born in the United States, and that there’s a serious threat that he is therefore ineligible to have become President.

I guess this actually counts as pretty tame stuff, compared to saying that Hilary Clinton had Vince Foster murdered, a theory that Rush was still name checking during the 2008 primaries.

You’ve Got A Hammer, But This Time, There Actually Are A Lot Of Nails Around…

As part of a post on the politics of emergencies, Reihan analogizes the following two lines, the first of which is George Packer, defending Obama against David Brooks, the second of which is his invention:

• Obama isn’t trying to remake America’s economy and society out of ideological hubris. He’s initiating sweeping changes because he inherited a set of interrelated emergencies that require swift, decisive action.
• Bush isn’t trying to remake the Middle East out of ideological hubris. He’s initiating sweeping changes because he inherited a set of interrelated emergencies that require swift, decisive action.

The analogy bears weight in only one tiny regard: if you think that Packer’s invocation of a crisis that “requires swift, decisive action” is meant to foreclose debate and endorse any policy that the President puts forward, then you will see the analogy, since Bush used the crisis as a method of avoiding real debate.  

But on the merits, there is no analogy.  Nothing about the 9/11 attacks, coming from radical Islamists who had had negligible contact with Saddam Hussein, suggested a reason to attack Iraq.  Yet the administration took advantage of a public willing to believe that there was such a connection in order to conduct a meaningless war.  In a less serious instance, they passed a capital gains tax cut on September 13, 2001.

In contrast, Greg Mankiw, a prominent stimulus critic, listed the potential for fiscal policy to stimulate “a less than fully employed economy” as one of his fourteen examples of where there was broad agreement by economists on an issue of macroeconomics.  One can easily argue that the choices of spending are bad ones, given the aim of stimulating the economy, but what one can’t argue is that federal expenditures as stimulus are an arbitrary response to the crisis that we’re facing.  

A further point: someone might try to repair the analogy by arguing that many of the items in the stimulus bill are Democratic pet projects, just like attacking Iraq was a neocon pet project.  However, this isn’t enough–projects can be both Democratic pet projects and stimulative.  This is a point that many conservative commentators have continually missed.  The Democrats are the majority party.  If there’s a case where they can advance external goals while also addressing the crisis, they should.  That’s only wrong if they’re subordinating the stimulus to their other goals.  Any such argument would have to proceed on a case by case basis, and so far that kind of criticism has been lacking.  Instead, there have been a lot of careless attacks that do nothing more than call the bill liberal.

Kiss and Tell

I’m not sure whether the (ed: now very old–this post has been sitting as a draft for roughly a week) comments by Obama’s deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand are just tone-deaf or downright creepy:

The point I’m making here is that our new president, the Congress and all Americans must come together to solve these problems. This is not a time for the left wing of our Party to draw conclusions about the Cabinet and White House appointments that President-Elect Obama is making.

That sounds like the old president.   The bad one.  Slightly more encouraging is the following paragraph:

As a liberal member of our Party, I hope and expect our new president to address those issues that will benefit the vast majority of Americans first and foremost. That’s his job. Over time, there will be many, many issues that come before him. But first let’s get our economy moving, bring our troops home safely, fix health care, end climate change and restore our place in the world. What a great president Barack Obama will be if he can work with Congress and the American people to make great strides in these very difficult times.

Marc Ambinder thinks this has the effect of framing what is still a very liberal agenda as the centrist counterweight to the left-wing of the party.  See, liberals want crazy things, Obama wants sane things like ending the war, health care, environmental protection… The other reassuring reading of Hildebrand’s comments is that he did a bad job of saying “don’t jump the gun, wait and see how we govern.”  Those caveats provided, what’s the negative reading of Hildebrand’s remarks, and why is it worrying? 

Since the election, there have been a number of disturbing signals about how the new administration might govern, and how political commentators will react to it.  We have John Podesta saying “if you leak, you’re gone,” and there are non-disclosure agreements for the transition team.  Marc Ambinder calls the absence of leaks “kind of amazing.”  Matt Miller, of the Center for American Progress (but thankfully no part of the administration!), called on Obama to act like a celebrity, and sign binding contracts to block aides who would “kiss and tell.”

If an administration is pursuing good policies, then there’s a benefit to it being on message.  The media really is capable of wreaking havoc by focusing on petty internal feuds, or baseless speculation based on what insiders say off the record (you can see some of this already in the essentially baseless speculation about the Blagojevich scandal’s impact on Obama).  Yet on almost any important matter, we are better off with transparency.  

A major reason why I supported Obama, both during the primaries and the general election, was that he seemed to have better instincts about openness in government and the limits of executive power.  Even without major pressure from the public, I have no doubt he will do better on these issues than the Bush administration.  But almost all of the incentives for the President are bad ones here, so even someone with good instincts needs to be held to account by public opinion.  It’s the nature of political thought that despite your best efforts, it’s difficult to hold people you agree with to the same standards.  That bias makes it all the worse when prominent Democrats come out to defend government secrecy.

Republican Wish Fulfillment

In general, it’s far too early for speculation about 2012, but fight fire with fire.  Here’s David Frum:

And when he holds out the hypothesis of a Hillary run in 2016, I think I hear him saying that what he’s really worried about is a Hillary putsch in 2012—either a primary challenge to President Obama or an attempt to muscle her way onto the ticket in place of Joe Biden.

On the one hand, Frum does not explain why there would be a 2012 putsch.  On the other, it’s a very stupid idea–how could a primary challenge give Clinton a chance to be president in 2012?

Attempts to find conflict between Obama and Clinton started off on the basis of real policy disagreements and acrimony during the primaries, but they’ve now just reached a level of self-perpetuating absurdity.

Human Rights Speculation

As a candidate, Mr. Obama said the CIA’s interrogation program should adhere to the same rules that apply to the military, which would prohibit the use of techniques such as waterboarding. He has also said the program should be investigated.

The new president could take a similar approach to revising the rules for CIA interrogations, said one current government official familiar with the transition. Upon review, Mr. Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight. (WSJ, h/t Jamelle).

One probably shouldn’t leap to conclusions based on unsourced reports about what a president who has yet to be inaugurated might do, based on his choice of people in a transition team.  So I won’t use this moment to speculate about whether that decision would merit a protest vote in 2012, etc.

But torture is the type of issue that a good administration would never consider compromising on.  And if you want to defend these tactics, and claim they’re not torture, make the case upfront, instead of the two sets of rules cop out (and leave waterboarding off the table–I have zero doubt that it’s categorically unacceptable). 

Talk is cheap, but here’s an Amnesty International Petition to call on Obama to close Guantanamo, ban harsh interrogation tactics and establish a commission to investigate previous human rights abuses in the war on terror, and to do those things in the first 100 days.  There are worse things you could ineffectually vent about.

Nothing to See Here

When I saw Radley Balko’s post that 6 of the 15 members of Obama’s transition team were bundlers, I had an immediate reaction of disgust.  Even for something like a transition team, where the individuals aren’t wielding serious power, it’s important to pick people for genuine ability, rather than mere fundraising ability.  

Two thoughts provided a bit of a relief to me.  First, Obama’s list of bundlers was huge–561 people in all–that’s somewhat worrying by itself, since bundling is a way for powerful people to angle for access.  But in this particular case, the simple ratio makes it a lot less weird that six of these people are on Obama’s committee.  Second, and more importantly, the fact that people on the transition team were bundlers only matters depending on the direction of causality.  That is, suppose you strongly supported Obama, and you had the ability to act as a bundler.  You’d definitely do it, and your motivation for it would be even stronger if you were involved in the campaign.  

The six individuals we’re talking about are Susan Rice, Federico Peña, Julius Genachowski, Donald Gips, Valerie Jarrett, and Michael Froman. Rice was on the National Security Council under Clinton, and was a senior foreign policy advisor to Obama.  Peña had two cabinet level posts, and was a national co-chair for Obama.   Gips was Chief Domestic Policy Advisor for Al Gore, Genachowski was part of the FCC and clerked for Souter.  Jarrett is a senior campaign advisor and is expected to be part of the administration.  Froman is the odd man out–he doesn’t seem to have any government experience (though his wikipedia bio is short), but he has a lot of private sector experience.  

In short, I think it’s hard to find a story here.  Bundling raises a lot of problems, but there’s not much of a case that these folks are anything but really qualified people, who were bundlers because they wanted to contribute to the Obama campaign.

Outsourcing Bleg

I have nagging doubts that I may have mentioned this before, but I don’t think so.  Anyway, Obama repeatedly talks about tax cuts for corporations that move jobs overseas–he promises that he’ll end these tax breaks. Awhile ago, the question began bothering me: what exactly are the tax breaks has in mind? I’m inclined to doubt the implication that there is a special tax cut just for companies that outsource workers.  Does he mean he’d remove existing tax breaks from companies that do this? If so, how to decide which breaks are included? In any case, this seems like a weird sort of proposal–does anyone know the substance of it?

Majorities and Mandates

By the standards of the last eight years, Obama might be headed for a huge victory.  The most optimistic predictions, at electoral-vote.com, now have him winning by as much as 153 electoral votes.  But by the standards of the past 50 years it’s not an especially large win.  Once you cut out the Bush victories, only the 1976 election was substantially closer.  That fact should raise some red flags about thinking this will be a really big win, of the kind that inaugurates an electoral realignment, or ensures the new president will easily be able to implement his agenda.

It’s especially fruitful to bear in mind Bill Clinton’s first term here.  It’s a bit difficult to assess how strong Clinton’s electoral victory was, because of the presence of Perot, but he did win 370 electoral votes.   In the first few months of Clinton’s presidency, his approval ratings were in the low-50s.  And the Democrats had House and Senate majorities comparable to what a president Obama might have.  Yet Clinton’s first term rapidly went south, with his approval ratings suffering, and his major legislative goals being unmet.  He lost his majority and only survived because of impressive political skill, and the Republicans overplaying their hand.  He was an effective president, but few of his accomplishments were distinctively progressive.  I don’t necessarily expect that scenario with Obama.  However, I do think that the opportunity for progressive reforms will primarily be contingent on events after the election.  

There are still reasons to be optimistic.  Since McCain is probably the most popular Republican at this point in time, the popular and electoral votes may understate the level of support a President Obama could command.  As Matthew Yglesias has been continually pointing out, the striking characteristic of the race is that it is a contest between two highly popular politicians.  Once it’s Obama against congressional Republicans, he could have even higher levels of support, so long as he doesn’t squander it.  

The worst case scenario would see Obama crippled by outside events.  With the economy in a severe recession, he might find the nation short on the resources necessary to implement important progressive policies.  Moreover, if economic troubles are beyond the government’s ability to alter–a plausible proposition–he could be blamed for that fact and be out after one term.

Making Social Security an Issue

Strategically, I wonder why Obama has never hit McCain on social security, since McCain’s views are toxic for his base of support–White folks over 65.  Perhaps it’s because the social security issue is iffy for Obama’s base–folks under 30.

Substantively, I don’t know what to think about social security.  I sort of weakly hold a Democratic line, since that’s maybe what you do when you’re a Democrat.  But as a matter of fact, I don’t get social security.  It doesn’t make any sense, down in my belly, that we should depend on a government program for our retirement.  It’s a really dissatisfying argument that people are such bad investors, even if that’s true.  Then the payroll tax is just a disaster in terms of both efficiency and fairness.  Lastly, the social security surplus encouraged fiscal irresponsibility for most of the late 20^th century.  On the whole, I’m really confused (wanna explain it to me?)

That was all a leadup to saying that it’s October 1^st. The election is in a month, and social security hasn’t become an issue, so it’s not going to become one now, even if it would’ve been a good idea for Obama.

I Don’t Like Eye Contact Either

I’m wondering if John McCain’s failure to look at Obama during the debates will play the role that Gore’s sighing did in 2000.  It seems to have been picked up as a commentariat story about his performance–one that people may or may not have noticed or cared about beforehand.  I was too busy eating delicious, delicious lamb to watch the debates, but look at some short clips, both I and Miss Lady were inclined to parse it as discomfort–he looked ill at ease (of course the low-status monkey theory has bearing here).  

If I were in the debate, I wouldn’t have been making eye contact, so I don’t know that I can care about McCain not doing so.  If you wanted to push this as a real story, you’d want some clearer evidence of contempt–I have heard the story that McCain’s inner circle does have a real contempt for Obama.

Damn: looks terrible in a series of photos.

Debates

As we all know, debates in the modern era are decided not based on which candidate is more impressive, nor on the substance of what they say, but based on who beats expectations.  No one thought Bush was winning the debates in 2000, but he showed up with his shoes tied, and no one called it beforehand.  Given that, it’s pretty clear that Obama is the favorite:

Obama Carries Uneven Record to First Contest
McCain Brings a Style Honed in and Out of Politics

If anything, the articles that follow are more polarized than the headlines: Obama comes across as aloof and ineffectual, while McCain is portrayed as a nasty sonofagun, capable of unfairly smearing any opponent.  The only better news for Obama would be if the articles mentioned his extreme disfluency–when he’s not delivering prepared speeches, he’s incapable of finishing a sentence without including several “uh”s.

This is Gonna Hurt

I don’t really want Obama to win the electoral vote while losing the popular vote.  I too want him to have a mandate, though the Bush administration showed that the exact margin of the vote may not be what lets you act like you have a mandate.

But it has to happen sometime.  The 2000 election made liberals pretty unhappy with the electoral vote, but it didn’t do enough to get it abolished.  Perhaps Republicans saw defending the electoral college as necessary for defending Bush.  But if the situation ever gets reversed and the Republicans lose an election while winning the popular vote, we might finally have the momentum to change the process.  The electoral college isn’t the worst aspect of our political system, but at this point it raises the continual risk of elections being seen as illegitimate, and we need to remove that.

Moral Obligations Towards Iraq

One trend that disturbs me in some recent Democratic positioning, most notably in some of Obama’s ads and his convention speech, is the idea that we should be somehow resentful of Iraqis.  His ads talk about how we’re spending $10 billion a month in Iraq while they sit on an oil surplus.  I wonder what credible charge this could express.  If we were taking $10 billion a month from the Iraqis, we’d be hearing cries of “no blood for oil,” and “imperialism” from any genuine liberal.  The damage that we’ve done to Iraq, the number of lives lost, seems to outweigh $10 billion a month.

On this limited issue, I think pro-war commentators are often closer to the truth than mainstream individuals who are (now) against the Iraq war.  When we chose to invade Iraq, we acquired a moral obligation to commit our resources to the benefit of Iraq, even if that invasion was immoral.  As Powell crudely put it “you break it, you buy it.”  The harsh truth is that the taxes American citizens pay are of lesser moral importance than the fate of Iraq.

The question now is not whether the war is too expensive, or in our narrow interest, but how our actions are likely to impact Iraq.  I think the questions bring us to the same answer, but it’s still a type of pandering to exploit resentment towards the Iraqi oil surplus.

The Difference Biden Makes

Obama started to criticize McCain’s judgment, and I immediately completed the sentence as “what kind of judgment does it show that John McCain voted for war with Iraq,” but Obama ended it with “that John McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time.”  The Democrats want to focus on the economy these days, but I can’t imagine that they guy in the #2 slot restricts how Obama can talk about Iraq.

The Obama Cover

I just received my copy of the infamous New Yorker issue tonight.  So much for an unbiased evaluation of whether or not I find it funny.

Muslim Roots

Data ain’t the plural of anecdote and all that, but:

Mr. Sultan, however, like many Iraqis, feels instinctively close to the senator because he heard that he had Muslim roots.

“Every time I see Obama I say: ‘He’s close to us. Maybe he’ll see us in a different way,’ ” Mr. Sultan said. “I find Obama very close to my heart.”

That seems to bear on the question of whether Muslims all over the world would think that Obama was an apostate who needs killed.  The NYTimes article is a good discussion of how Obama’s plans for troop withdrawal play in Iraq.